Sensitivity of reservoir operation performance to climatic change

Abstract

The potential impacts of changing climatic conditions on the operational performance of water resource systems was investigated in this paper. A multi-site streamflow generation model was used to synthesize potential monthly flow sequences reflecting two different sets of climatic conditions. The generated data were subsequently employed as input to a reservoir operation model that was used to determine the reservoir response to the inflow resulting from the implementation of the reservoir operating policy. The performance of an example reservoir system, the Shellmouth Reservoir located in the Canadian province of Manitoba, was evaluated and compared for the two sets of conditions. The operational performance was evaluated in terms of the reliability of the system for meeting the three purposes of the actual reservoir. The reservoir performance was determined to be sensitive to the inflow data. The results indicate that climatic change has potentially important implications for the operation of the example reservoir system.