Streamflow Forecast Errors and Their Impacts on Forecast-based Reservoir Flood Control

Zhao Liu (), Yiping Guo, Lixia Wang and Qing Wang

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2015, vol. 29, issue 12, 4557-4572

Abstract: To make full use of water captured by reservoirs in flood seasons, methods such as forecast-based reservoir flood control (i.e., reservoir operation during flood periods based on precipitation or inflow forecasts) have been developed in China in the past few decades. The success of forecast-based reservoir flood control depends heavily on the precision of the precipitation or inflow forecasts. This study analyzes the sources of uncertainty and quantifies it in the process of reservoir flood control based on forecasts. First, flood inflow series is regarded as a random process with the forecasted flood inflows as its expectation process; the flood inflow error series, which is the difference between the observed inflow process and the forecasted inflow process, is obtained according to the statistical characteristics of the flood forecasts. Second, reservoir flood routing simulations are carried out using the Monte Carlo method with the flood inflow error series as an input to obtain output water level and discharge series. Finally, the frequency distributions of the maximum water level (MWL) reached during the passage of floods are used to evaluate the uncertainties and the corresponding risks associated with forecast-based flood control. These uncertainties and risks are what the operators of the reservoirs care about the most. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Water resources; Reservoir operation; Flood regulation; Uncertainties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1007/s11269-015-1080-1

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