The battle of river basin models: the Narmada River Basin challenge

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a numerical test problem that was used as the basis for ranking the river basin management models that participated in a tender for a World Bank-funded project in India. The problem is deterministic, and it involves a set of constraints and management objectives that were of interest to the Narmada Control Authority. The test problem had five reservoirs, seven off-stream and four on-stream water demands, steady-state inflows based on a 10-daily time step over a period of nine years, and relatively simple reservoir operating rules. The paper describes the problem and discusses the solutions that were obtained from various vendors. The principal finding is that simulation models should not be used to solve optimization problems. The paper also highlights the importance of establishing benchmarks as an important tool for model evaluation. Input data and the current benchmark solution are available for download.

KEYWORDS:

• water resources systems
• reservoir operation
• system optimization
• multiple time step optimization
• equal deficit sharing

Editor A. Castellarin; Associate Editor E. Davies

Editor A. Castellarin; Associate Editor E. Davies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The test problem input data and the current benchmark solution are accessible from a public repository at https://data.world/nilich/narmadadata or, alternatively, from https://www.optimal-solutions-ltd.com/Default.aspx?tabid=44. The zipped download archive contains two spreadsheets, one containing the input data, and the other one containing the benchmark solution and several worksheets that can help evaluate its compliance with the required model constraints and calculate the objective function. This could be helpful for testing solutions produced by other vendors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Optimal Solutions Ltd., Government of India, Ministry of Water Resources.