Optimal allocation model of river emission rights based on water environment capacity limits

Abstract

China implements the most strict water resources management policy in 2009. The water resources management policy is controlled by three red limits: total water use amount cannot exceed the available water resources, water use efficiency must be higher than the efficiency red limits formulated by government, pollution capacity cannot exceed the pollutant-holding capacity. To implement the pollution red limits policy in the river basin, it must control the total amount of pollution discharged in the river. The initial water pollution allocation scenario is one of the most important systems in the total pollution control. This paper based on water function districts that for different water use purpose, divided the river to different segments by different water use, then allocated the initial emission permits to different water function districts. According to this allocation mode, the emission rights should firstly be allocated to the respective water function districts by the environmental management agency (vertical configuration), and then the emission rights are allocated to the dischargers from the water function districts (horizontal configuration). In the allocation model, fairness, efficiency and production continuity of the dischargers are regarded as the objective functions. The concentration and total quantity of pollutant are considered as the constraints of the model. At last, we get an example and solve it with multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to verify that the model is viable.

Keywords:

• River emission rights
• Multi-objective optimization
• Fairness
• Efficiency
• Total pollutant quantity control

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NSFC (51309129, 51109224), Ministry of Water Resources’ Special Funds for Scientific Research on Public Causes (201201016), Foundation of Jiang’xi Science and Technology Department (20123BBG70215).

Notes

Presented at the Second International Conference on Water Resources Management and Engineering (ICWRME 2012) Zhengzhou, China, 14–16 August 2012.