Reservoir Operation Rules Research Articles

The impact of lake and reservoir parameterization on global streamflow simulation

Lakes and reservoirs affect the timing and magnitude of streamflow, and are therefore essential hydrological model components, especially in the context of global flood forecasting. However, the parameterization of lake and reservoir routines on a global scale is subject to considerable uncertainty due to lack of information on lake hydrographic characteristics and reservoir operating rules. In this study we estimated the effect of lakes and reservoirs on global daily streamflow simulations of a spatially-distributed LISFLOOD hydrological model. We applied state-of-the-art global sensitivity and uncertainty analyses for selected catchments to examine the effect of uncertain lake and reservoir parameterization on model performance. Streamflow observations from 390 catchments around the globe and multiple performance measures were used to assess model performance.Results indicate a considerable geographical variability in the lake and reservoir effects on the streamflow simulation. Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) and Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE) metrics improved for 65% and 38% of catchments respectively, with median skill score values of 0.16 and 0.2 while scores deteriorated for 28% and 52% of the catchments, with median values −0.09 and −0.16, respectively. The effect of reservoirs on extreme high flows was substantial and widespread in the global domain, while the effect of lakes was spatially limited to a few catchments. As indicated by global sensitivity analysis, parameter uncertainty substantially affected uncertainty of model performance. Reservoir parameters often contributed to this uncertainty, although the effect varied widely among catchments. The effect of reservoir parameters on model performance diminished with distance downstream of reservoirs in favor of other parameters, notably groundwater-related parameters and channel Manning’s roughness coefficient. This study underscores the importance of accounting for lakes and, especially, reservoirs and using appropriate parameterization in large-scale hydrological simulations.

Derivation of Tri-level Programming Model for Multi-Reservoir Optimal Operation in Inter-Basin Transfer-Diversion-Supply Project

This study derives tri-level programming model for multi-reservoir optimal operation in inter-basin transfer-diversion-supply project. Considering the complexity, uncertainty and dynamic nature of the transfer-diversion-supply project, the tri-level programming model is explored in this study to deeply reveal the independency and Inter connectedness of Stackelberg’s decision among transfer, diversion and supply, which is denoted with a set of rule curves of donor reservoirs and recipient reservoirs. Except that the reservoir operation rule can be devised, the model also indicates that it’s possible to establish a greater sustainability. In order to verify the utility of the tri-level programming model, an inter-basin water transfer-diversion-supply project in China is used as a case study. A particle swarm optimization can be easily integrated with simulation models to improve the performance of non-linear optimization. But PSO has premature convergence. IEA has excellent global search performance. So, the IEA-PSO is adopted for optimizing the decision variables. The result shows that the suggested method can achieve operation goal effectively and also improve the operation performance of the inter-basin multi-reservoir system. This article highlights the superior results compared with the current operating control rules.

Evaluating functions of reservoirs′ storage capacities and locations on daily peak attenuation for Ganjiang River Basin using Xinanjiang model

Flooding is the most prevalent and costly natural disaster in the world and building reservoirs is one of the major structural measures for flood control and management. In this paper, a framework was proposed to evaluate functions of reservoirs′ locations and magnitudes on daily peak flow attenuation for a large basin of China, namely Ganjiang River Basin. In this study, the Xinanjiang model was adopted to simulate inflows of the reservoirs and flood hydrographs of all sub-catchments of the basin, and simple reservoir operation rules were established for calculating outflows of the reservoirs. Four reservoirs scenarios were established to analyze reservoirs′ locations on daily peak flow attenuation. The results showed that: 1) reservoirs attenuated the peak discharges for all simulated floods, when the flood storage capacities increase as new reservoirs were built, the peak discharge attenuation by reservoirs showed an increasing tendency both in absolute and relative measures; 2) reservoirs attenuated more peak discharge relatively for small floods than for large ones; 3) reservoirs reduced the peak discharge more efficiently for the floods with single peak or multi peaks with main peak occurred first; and 4) effect of upstream reservoirs on peak attenuation decreased from upper reaches to lower reaches; upstream and midstream reservoirs played important roles in decreasing peak discharge both at middle and lower reaches, and downstream reservoirs had less effect on large peak discharge attenuation at outlet of the basin. The proposed framework of evaluating functions of multiple reservoirs′ storage capacities and locations on peak attenuation is valuable for flood control planning and management at basin scale.

Comparison of static and dynamic resilience for a multipurpose reservoir operation

AbstractReliability, resilience, and vulnerability are the traditional risk measures used to assess the performance of a reservoir system. Among these measures, resilience is used to assess the ability of a reservoir system to recover from a failure event. However, the time‐independent static resilience does not consider the system characteristics, interaction of various individual components and does not provide much insight into reservoir performance from the beginning of the failure event until the full performance recovery. Knowledge of dynamic reservoir behavior under the disturbance offers opportunities for proactive and/or reactive adaptive response that can be selected to maximize reservoir resilience. A novel measure is required to provide insight into the dynamics of reservoir performance based on the reservoir system characteristics and its adaptive capacity. The reservoir system characteristics include, among others, reservoir storage curve, reservoir inflow, reservoir outflow capacity, and reservoir operating rules. The reservoir adaptive capacity can be expressed using various impacts of reservoir performance under the disturbance (like reservoir release for meeting a particular demand, socioeconomic consequences of reservoir performance, or resulting environmental state of the river upstream and downstream from the reservoir). Another way of expressing reservoir adaptive capacity to a disturbing event may include aggregated measures like reservoir robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity. A novel measure that combines reservoir performance and its adaptive capacity is proposed in this paper and named “dynamic resilience.” The paper also proposes a generic simulation methodology for quantifying reservoir resilience as a function of time. The proposed resilience measure is applied to a single multipurpose reservoir operation and tested for a set of failure scenarios. The dynamic behavior of reservoir resilience is captured using the system dynamics simulation approach, a feedback‐based object‐oriented method, very effective for modeling complex systems. The results of dynamic resilience are compared with the traditional performance measures in order to identify advantages of the proposed measure. The results confirm that the dynamic resilience is a powerful tool for selecting proactive and reactive adaptive response of a multipurpose reservoir to a disturbing event that cannot be achieved using traditional measures. The generic quantification approach proposed in the paper allows for easy use of dynamic resilience for planning and operations of various civil infrastructure systems.

Optimal Hedging Rules for Two-Objective Reservoir Operation: Balancing Water Supply and Environmental Flow

AbstractAnalytical optimal hedging rules are derived for two-objective reservoir operation based on the characteristics of economic and multilevel environmental water demands. This approach is employed to balance current and future economic and environmental water demands using a two-period model. According to the marginal values of utilities, the derived three-step hedging rule curves (THRCs) consist of three steps and six stages. The Huaihe River basin of China is taken as an example to regress the THRCs from a two-objective optimization model. Results show that the derived THRCs can be regressed from the optimal release decision, thereby confirming the derivations and theoretical analysis. The shapes of the THRCs are sensitive to the weight parameters of the objectives and capture the core concern of multiobjective reservoir operation. The THRCs tend to widen and flatten the stages with increasing storage capacity, which implies more water storage and more consideration for future demands.

Reservoir Operation Rules with Uncertainties in Reservoir Inflow and Agricultural Demand Derived with Stochastic Dynamic Programming

AbstractA proposed stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) method with uncertainties in stream flow and water demand is developed to calculate optimal reservoir operation rules. The SDP method extends the classic SDP method that considers only one uncertainty in its operation rules. Time series of reservoir inflow and agricultural water demand for the Aydoghmoush Reservoir in eastern Azarbayejan, Iran, were obtained from meteorological data, available climate parameters, hydrologic data, and crop water demand. The application of the developed SDP with two uncertainties was evaluated with operation rules corresponding to four different scenarios, and optimal reservoir releases were determined for a drought year. Reservoir operation results were evaluated with different performance indices. This study’s results demonstrate the advantage of considering uncertainties in reservoir inflow and water demand with the SDP method. The developed SDP method has general applicability under a range of climatic conditions, ...

Predictive Temporal Data-Mining Approach for Evolving Knowledge Based Reservoir Operation Rules

The persistent problem in reservoir operation is that the derived optimal releases fail to incorporate the decision maker or reservoir operators’ knowledge into reservoir operation models. The reservoir operators’ knowledge is specific to that particular reservoir and incorporating such an experienced knowledge will help to derive field reality based operation rules. The available historical reservoir operation databases are the representative samples of reservoir operators’ knowledge or experience. Thus, an attempt has been made that deals with the development of a methodological framework to recover or explore the historical reservoir operation database to derive the reservoir operators’ knowledge as operational rules. The developed methodological framework utilizes the strength and capability of recently developed predictive datamining algorithms to recover the knowledge from large historical database. Predictive data-mining algorithms such as a) classifier: Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and b) regression: Support Vector Regression (SVR) have been used for single reservoir operation data-mining (SROD) modelling framework to explore the temporal dependence between different variables of reservoir operation. The rules of operation or knowledge learned from the training database have been used as guiding rules for predicting the future reservoir operators’ decision on operating the reservoir for the given condition on the inflow, initial storage, and demand requirements. The developed SROD model was found to be efficient in exploring the hidden relationships that exist in a single reservoir system.

Development of an optimal reservoir pumping operation for adaptation to climate change

Optimization of operation rule curve of Layang reservoir located in southern part of peninsular Malaysia under climate change uncertainties has been presented in this study. Downscaled climate data were incorporated in a lumped rainfall-runoff model to project daily reservoir inflow, which was then used to determine the reservoir operation rule curves to minimize the operation cost. The results reveal that climatic change will cause a rise of temperature in the range of 1.5-2.9°C, but decrease in rainfall in most of the months in the end of this century which will casue a change in the seasonal pattern of inflow to reservoir. Comparison of historical and model generated operation costs indicates that annual savings of 23% and 33% is possible with optimized reservoir operation rule curves. Assessment of the performance of the optimized operation curve under climate change scenarios shows that it will be able to cope with the changing pattern of reservoir inflow with proper adjustment. It is expected that the method presented in this paper to derive pumping operation curves to optimize the total volume of water to be pumped from various sources to reservoir can be useful for reservoir operators in the context of climate change.

Reservoir Operating Rule Optimization for California’s Sacramento Valley

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15447/sfews.2016v14iss1art6 Reservoir operating rules for water resource systems are typically developed by combining intuition, professional discussion, and simulation modeling. This paper describes a joint optimization–simulation approach to develop preliminary economically-based operating rules for major reservoirs in California’s Sacramento Valley, based on optimized results from CALVIN, a hydro-economic optimization model. We infer strategic operating rules from the optimization model results, including storage allocation rules to balance storage among multiple reservoirs, and reservoir release rules to determine monthly release for individual reservoirs. Results show the potential utility of considering previous year type on water availability and various system and sub-system storage conditions, in addition to normal consideration of local reservoir storage, season, and current inflows. We create a simple simulation to further refine and test the derived operating rules. Optimization model results show particular insights for balancing the allocation of water storage among Shasta, Trinity, and Oroville reservoirs over drawdown and refill seasons, as well as some insights for release rules at major reservoirs in the Sacramento Valley. We also discuss the applicability and limitations of developing reservoir operation rules from optimization model results.

Optimization of Hedging Rules for Reservoir Operation During Droughts Based on Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper presents a methodology to achieve the identification of optimal hedging rules for operating reservoir systems, seeking to mitigate the drought impacts. The heuristic Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method is adopted as the optimization solver. This procedure establishes a two-phase method that combines PSO with the simulation of the water system, representing a system of reservoirs that are jointly operated to satisfy a set of demands with different priorities. The hedging rules are based on monthly storage levels that trigger restrictions on the demands. As model parameters, monthly rule activation thresholds and rationing factors were used for each type of demand. The optimization procedure minimizes an objective function that penalizes large deficits and assigns different weights to different demand types. Since the whole problem is quite complex, its dimensionality is reduced through: i) a set of candidate monthly activation thresholds are selected a priori associated to given risk conditions; and ii) the rationing factors are defined for every demand of each threshold throughout all months. In addition, an effort is made to avoid the trap in local optimums, whilst several other comments considering the application of the PSO method in the examined applications are provided. The procedure has been successfully applied to four water resource systems in Spain. From the application it can be seen that the deficits of the water supply demand are nearly removed, thanks to the larger weight given to the deficits of this demand type. The irrigation deficits are also reduced, since we lead to a sequence of smaller shortages than only one potential catastrophic shortage.

A question driven socio-hydrological modeling process

Abstract. Human and hydrological systems are coupled: human activity impacts the hydrological cycle and hydrological conditions can, but do not always, trigger changes in human systems. Traditional modeling approaches with no feedback between hydrological and human systems typically cannot offer insight into how different patterns of natural variability or human-induced changes may propagate through this coupled system. Modeling of coupled human–hydrological systems, also called socio-hydrological systems, recognizes the potential for humans to transform hydrological systems and for hydrological conditions to influence human behavior. However, this coupling introduces new challenges and existing literature does not offer clear guidance regarding model conceptualization. There are no universally accepted laws of human behavior as there are for the physical systems; furthermore, a shared understanding of important processes within the field is often used to develop hydrological models, but there is no such consensus on the relevant processes in socio-hydrological systems. Here we present a question driven process to address these challenges. Such an approach allows modeling structure, scope and detail to remain contingent on and adaptive to the question context. We demonstrate the utility of this process by revisiting a classic question in water resources engineering on reservoir operation rules: what is the impact of reservoir operation policy on the reliability of water supply for a growing city? Our example model couples hydrological and human systems by linking the rate of demand decreases to the past reliability to compare standard operating policy (SOP) with hedging policy (HP). The model shows that reservoir storage acts both as a buffer for variability and as a delay triggering oscillations around a sustainable level of demand. HP reduces the threshold for action thereby decreasing the delay and the oscillation effect. As a result, per capita demand decreases during periods of water stress are more frequent but less drastic and the additive effect of small adjustments decreases the tendency of the system to overshoot available supplies. This distinction between the two policies was not apparent using a traditional noncoupled model.

Simulation of Flood Control Water Reservoir in Conditions of Torrential Rains on the Catchment

Every water reservoir must be ready to the control of catastrophic flood. The most dangerous situations can be on the catchments where torrential rains can have significant duration and intensity. Lead time of runoff forecast for dangerous flood depended on increase of rainfall intensity and time concentration maximum water discharge on the catchment. Some water reservoirs have enough significant catchments and sometimes the time concentration is more 5 days. Then we are obtaining possibility to use data of meteorological stations how predictors of floods. For example, catchment of Krasnodar water reservoir has large catchment and is located on the North Caucasus territory. Its climate is characterized by not-periodical storm rainfalls (sometimes after long drought). Consequently the main aim of the research was development of rules for water reservoir operation during floods in dependent on data of meteorological stations about precipitation. The main problems were next: clarification of time concentration maximum water discharge on the catchment; the choice of meteorological stations how predictors of floods; development of rules for water reservoir operation during floods; the checking of rules for water reservoir operation during floods relative to different combinations of maximum flood discharges and previous data of meteorological stations about precipitation.It should be noted that data of locator stations are not used for forecasts of precipitation and runoff on the today moment of research because their network is not dense enough and there are frequent situations when clouds give only dry thunder without rain.

Parameter Uncertainties in a Conceptual Rainfall-runoff Model and Implications on Surface Water Management and Planning Decisions

This paper investigates the uncertainties arising from parameter identification in a conceptual rainfall-runoff model and implications on surface water management and planning decisions. A conceptual rainfall-runoff model, the Probability Distributed Rainfall-Runoff Model (PDM), is applied within the Dove River catchment (UK) using 1km2 resolution radar rainfall as inputs and 15minutes resolution gauged flow data for calibration and validation. In most conceptual/lumped models, some parameters lack physical basis and cannot be inferred from direct measurements. The DiffeRential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm developed by Vrugt et al. [1] is employed for Bayesian inference to automatically calibrate the model against observed flow data. Probabilistic flow predictions are determined based on the resulting posterior parameter distributions, which reflect the residual model parameter uncertainty. These uncertainties associated with model parameters are propagated through a reservoir management model to assess its impacts on reservoir performance in maintaining adequate supply demand balance. The impact of using various reservoir operational rules on the characteristics of uncertainty propagation and associated impact on predicted supply demand balance are investigated. The results in this study suggest that adaptive management of reservoir operational rules can be used to achieve optimum balance between environmental impact, drought reliable supply and operation cost.

Optimization of Reservoir Operation Using Cuckoo Search Algorithm: Example of Adiguzel Dam, Denizli, Turkey

The Adiguzel Dam is located in Denizli in the western part of Turkey. It was built for irrigation purposes, but it also produces energy at the same time. The dam’s energy-production regime is not regular since there are no reservoir-operating rules. Thus, this study develops a reservoir optimization rule to generate a corresponding gain in energy production. It is well known that operating a reservoir is a complex problem that depends on many parameters such as inflow, storage capacity, water elevation, tailwater elevation, and evaporation. Therefore, in order to optimize energy production, there is a need to use heuristic algorithms such as the Cuckoo Search (CS). This study develops a CS algorithm-based solution to optimize the reservoir’s operational system and generate an optimal operation rule curve. Results show that the CS algorithm improves the system operation, and the energy production will be increased by about 10% to a value of 160000 MWh with a corresponding economic gain of about $12 × 106in total for 183 months.

Estimating Flood Discharges in Reservoir-Regulated River Basins by Integrating Synthetic SWOT Satellite Observations and Hydrologic Modeling

AbstractLakes and reservoirs are widely used for water supply and flood control, especially during large storm events. In hydrologic modeling applications, accounting for the regulated behavior of reservoirs distributed throughout a river system poses a significant challenge, especially during flood events, when detailed reservoir operation rules and strategies are implemented. Building on this problem, this study addresses this question: Can we model reservoir water storage changes and outlet discharges based on satellite measurements of river water surface elevation and inundated areas especially during the flood event? A method is presented and evaluated using synthetic observations as a proxy for measurements from the forthcoming surface water and ocean topography (SWOT) satellite mission. The May 2010 flood event in the Cumberland River Basin is used as a case study. Based on synthetic SWOT observation, time series of water storage changes are generated and evaluated for eight reservoirs. As expected...

A Model for Developing Reservoir Operation Rules for Irrigation Projects

At a basin scale the criteria for designing reservoirs for irrigation projects are based in three aspects: i) Storage required for supplying crop water requirements at an irrigated area, which are calculated for critical drought conditions. ii) Storage required for releasing the minimum ecological river flow under the described weather condition. iii) Spillway dimensions to evacuate high peak flow events. Those aspects are fundamental for designing a reservoir, however, designing reservoir operation rules is also an important aspect and normally it is a big uncertainty for project managers. This study focuses on developing a mathematical model for operating reservoirs for irrigation projects into an integrated basin context. The crop cycle is simulated for several year based on long term historical hydro-meteorological time series in a daily basis. Irrigation requirements are obtained from those simulations. Those results are clustered in 10-day periods during the crop cycle. Frequency analyses of the irrigation requirements are performed. Those results are applied for building irrigation schedules for dry, normal, and rainy conditions. Furthermore, frequency analyses are performed to the distributed rainfall for determining similar weather thresholds. The reservoir operation consists in first routing the inflow thorough the reservoir to the different outlets. A conceptual hydrological routing model is applied for this purpose. Second, the amount of water to release from the reservoir to the irrigation scheme depends on amount of rainfall measured during the precedent 10-days and on the irrigation schedule for that weather condition. The model was developed for a case study in the Ecuadorian Coast, which is a large irrigation project, called PACALORI. The reservoir operation rules were obtained by modeling the system for 42 years of hydro-meteorological data. The model would be implemented in a real time operation, depending on the monitoring implementation for measuring rainfall, flow, and meteorological variables.

Derivation of operation rules for reservoirs in parallel with joint water demand

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to derive the general optimality conditions of the commonly used operating policies for reservoirs in parallel with joint water demand, which are defined in terms of system‐wide release rules and individual reservoir storage balancing functions. Following that, a new set of release rules for individual reservoirs are proposed in analytical forms by considering the optimality conditions for the balance of total water delivery utility and carryover storage value of individual reservoirs. Theoretical analysis indicates that the commonly used operating policies are a special case of the newly derived rules. The derived release rules are then applied to simulating the operation of a parallel reservoir system in northeastern China. Compared to the performance of the commonly used policies, some advantages of the proposed operation rules are illustrated. Most notably, less water shortage occurrence and higher water supply reliability are obtained from the proposed operation rules.

Modeling stream temperature in the Anthropocene: An earth system modeling approach

AbstractA new large‐scale stream temperature model has been developed within the Community Earth System Model (CESM) framework. The model is coupled with the Model for Scale Adaptive River Transport (MOSART) that represents river routing and a water management model (WM) that represents the effects of reservoir operations and water withdrawals on flow regulation. The coupled models allow the impacts of reservoir operations and withdrawals on stream temperature to be explicitly represented in a physically based and consistent way. The models have been applied to the Contiguous United States driven by observed meteorological forcing. Including water management in the models improves the agreement between the simulated and observed streamflow at a large number of stream gauge stations. It is then shown that the model is capable of reproducing stream temperature spatiotemporal variation satisfactorily by comparing against the observed data from over 320 USGS stations. Both climate and water management are found to have important influence on the spatiotemporal patterns of stream temperature. Furthermore, it is quantitatively estimated that reservoir operation could cool down stream temperature in the summer low‐flow season (August–October) by as much as 1∼2°C due to enhanced low‐flow conditions, which have important implications to aquatic ecosystems. Sensitivity of the simulated stream temperature to input data and reservoir operation rules used in the WM model motivates future directions to address some limitations in the current modeling framework.

THE ROLE OF GROUNDWATER TO MITIGATE THE DROUGHT AND AS AN ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE PHITSANULOK IRRIGATION PROJECT, IN THE NAN BASIN, THAILAND

The Phitsanulok Irrigation Project is located in the Nan Basin of the Upper Central Plain of Thailand where farmers depended on both surface water and groundwater. Land use and climate changes are the important factors to determine the runoff from the watershed. The changes also affected to runoff volume/pattern to the dam operation and may cause flood and drought situations in the downstream area. Sirikit Dam is one of the biggest dams in Thailand which cover about 25 % of the runoff into the Central Plain where the Bangkok Capital is located. Though there is the Sirikit Dams storing water to be used during dry period but water allocation is limited and still caused water shortage during dry season. The study aims to determine the role of groundwater to mitigate the drought situation from the past and to study the groundwater use for adaptation to climate change in The Phitsanulok Irrigation Development Project. In this study, the relationship of recharge rate with climate data was developed in terms of precipitation, evapotranspiration, temperature and soil type under monthly time series data and the study found that there were in good relationship. Groundwater will take an important role to alleviate from the water shortage situations in climate change conditions when compared with the situations based on the existing water use pattern. The limit of ground water to alleviate water shortage will be 80 and 77 MCM/year in average, in near future and far future periods to keep water table drawn down in the safe manner even when the Sirikit’s reservoir operation rule is improved.

Water Supply to the Two Largest Brazilian Metropolitan Regions

The Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR) is heavily industrialized and it is the most important economic centre of Latin America. It is the home to over 20 million people. The Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR) was in the past the country's capital city and is presently the second most important economic centre of Brazil. It is the home of 12 million people. Although the two metropolitan regions are 400km apart, they increasingly depend on water from the same source. Rapid urbanization and economic development in both areas have increased demand for water. With insufficient collection and treatment of sewage and with the current unprecedented drought, local sources of water are not sufficient and/or unsafe. As a result, the two giant metropolitan regions now dispute water from the same river, the Paraiba do Sul, which runs for roughly one thousand kilometres crossing three Brazilian states: Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro State. Recently there was a change of the operation rules for reservoirs located in the basin, conceived originally to optimize hydropower production, in order to accommodate the new situation. This paper explains the political, technical, and water-energy consequences of this dispute for water.