Water Resources Research Report

Files

Download

Download Full Text (3.3 MB)

Summary

Climate change is one of the more pressing issues that attract the attention of scientists and policy makers. Many scientists are developing necessary methodologies to better understand the impacts of climate change, and support the development of appropriate adaptation measures. Literature on the application of adaptation measures to changing climatic conditions is very limited and the need for more work is evident on the development of adaptation strategies for mitigating negative impacts of climate change in water resources management practice.

This study presents an integrated reservoir management system for the Upper Thames River basin that includes: (1) a Weather Generator (WG) model; (2) a hydrologic model; and (3) a differential evolutionary optimization model. It is used to develop the alternative optimal operating rule curves for three reservoirs in the basin that will take into consideration the impact of climate change. Alternative curves developed using the proposed methodology represent one of the possible climate change adaptation strategies for the use of existing storage in the basin.

Three different weather scenarios are employed to verify the integrated reservoir management system; (1) Case 1: scenarios set | generated with the original WG model of Sharif and Burn (2006) with one variable (precipitation); (2) Case 2: scenario set ||: generated with original WG model with three variables named WG3; (3) scenario set |||: generated with the modified WG that is combined with Principal Component Analysis using three variables WG-PCA3. The results of this study indicate that the rule curves developed using B11(dry) climate scenario show the best result for the scenarios set | because there is no significant flood events in the case 1 and for the scenario set || and the scenario set ||| generated by WG3 and WG-PCA3, the B11 (PCA) rule curves provide the best result for B11, B11(PCA), and historic(PCA) scenarios and the B21 rule curves represent the best results for B21 and B21(PCA) scenarios. Another notable result is that the flood operations would be required until April if the B21(wet) scenario occurs in the future. In addition, the WG-PCA3 provides more wet weather conditions than the original WG model.

ISBN (Online)

978-0-7714-2711-4

ISBN (Print)

978-0-7714-2710-7

Publication Date

3-2009

Publisher

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Western Ontario

City

London, Ontario, Canada

Disciplines

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Notes

Report no.: 062

Integrated Reservoir Management System for Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts in the Upper Thames River Basin

Share

COinS