Improved Implicit Stochastic Optimization technique under drought conditions: the case study of Agri–Sinni water system

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a methodology is proposed to support water decisions by selecting and evaluating reservoir operating rules (OR) based on hydrological scenarios. The methodology includes optimization and simulation tools within an Implicit Stochastic Optimization (ISO) framework. The paper presents some improvements to the traditional ISO that overcome some limitations affecting previous works. Thanks to the collaboration with Regional Water Authorities in Southern Italy, the proposed methodology, called Modified Implicit Stochastic Optimization (MISO), has been tested in the Agri–Sinni water system. In a participatory and integrated risk management approach to drought events, the reservoir OR defined in the MISO approach based on correlations between releases, storages and inflows performed better than the actual OR in the Agri–Sinni water system and the OR from a simulation-alone procedure. In addition, the user can obtain a significant reduction of computational time by applying the MISO technique in a Grid computing approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Operating rule
• Implicit Stochastic Optimization
• WARGI
• MODSIM
• grid computing
• Agri–Sinni water system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.