RELIABILITY RESILIENCE AND VULNERABILITY BASED RESERVOIR OPERATION POLICY

Abstract

The availability of an adequate and firm supply of water is critically essential to survival of life and economic development of any region. In recent times the demand for water in different sectors like agriculture, industry and domestic consumption has increased rapidly. Several water resources development projects like major and minor dams and reservoirs have been taken up by governments of different nations to address the challenge of conservation and management of available water resources for meeting water demand for increased economic, environmental and social benefits. Such engineering projects involve huge investments in terms of money and manpower. In addition to their planning and design, their operation involving sequential release decisions play a vital role in maximizing the benefits from them by minimizing the losses due to water-shortage. A variety of optimization and simulation models and modelling approaches have been developed to assist water planners and managers in identifying and evaluating operation policy for reservoirs. Mathematical optimization of reservoir operating policy have proven to be extremely beneficial in assisting decision makers in effectively utilizing valuable water resources, especially during periods of critical weather such as prolonged droughts. The mixed linear programming model; which is one of the effective optimization techniques in water resources system is used in this study for formulation of a multi-objective reservoir operation policy. Reliability, resilience and vulnerability criterion have been taken for performance evaluation of the reservoir system under failure conditions. Reliability criterion limits the total number of deficit periods that can occur during the period of analysis. Resilience and vulnerability criteria are used to limit the maximum consecutive deficit periods and maximum magnitude of deficit and hence safeguard against periods of consecutive shortages or severe shortages, either of which may induce additional damage during deficit periods. The objective of this optimization model iii aims at minimizing the maximum water-shortage of a single time-period and the total water-shortage over the entire period of analysis. The multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model and proposed solving procedures are applied to a case study of Upper Udanti Reservoir in Mahanadi River Basin, Orissa.