Adjustable robust strategies for flood protection

Krzysztof Postek, Dick den Hertog, Jarl Kind and Chris Pustjens

Omega, 2019, vol. 82, issue C, 142-154

Abstract: Flood protection is of major importance to many flood-prone regions and involves substantial investment and maintenance costs. Modern flood risk management often requires determining a cost-efficient protection strategy, i.e., one which has the lowest possible long run cost and which satisfies flood protection standards imposed by the regulator throughout the entire planning horizon. There are two challenges that complicate the modeling: (i) uncertainty - many of the important parameters on which the strategies are based (e.g. the sea level rise) are uncertain, and will be known only in the future, and (ii) adjustability - decisions implemented at later time stages need to adapt to the realized uncertainty values. We develop a new mathematical model addressing both issues, based on recent advances in integer robust optimization, and we apply it to the Rhine Estuary - Drechtsteden area in the Netherlands. Our approach shows, among others, that (i) considering 40% uncertainty about the sea level rise leads to a solution with less than 10% increase in the total cost, (ii) solutions taking the uncertainty into account are cheaper in the long run if the ‘bad scenarios’ for the uncertainty materialize, even if the ‘optimistic solutions’ are allowed to be repaired later on, and (iii) the optimal here-and-now investment decisions change when uncertainty and adjustability are included in the model.

Keywords: Robust optimization; Flood protection; Adjustability; Adaptivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305048316306703
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jomega:v:82:y:2019:i:c:p:142-154

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.omega.2017.12.009

Access Statistics for this article

Omega is currently edited by B. Lev

More articles in Omega from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().