Author(s): Ziad Shawwash

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Keywords: Flood Risk Management; Reservoir Operations; Water Management

Abstract: This paper presents the Risk Informed Decision-making Framework and software tool we developed to formally account for flood risk and uncertainty in reservoir operations. The framework and the software tool are intended to practically be used by reservoir operations planners to manage flooding events. We present a robust and comprehensive approach that accounts for a multitude of flood risks and their impacts, and that enables its users to identify those alternative reservoir operating plans that formally adopt a state-of-the-art risk informed decision-making framework. The framework is solidly grounded in and closely follows a well-structured planning process, and it augments existing planning processes and information flows that incorporates specific techniques and methods from probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) and Multicriteria Decision Analysis techniques (MCDA). The development of the framework and decision support tool was sponsored by seven major hydropower companies and agencies in North America and Europe. We present the results of a case study to illustrate the framework and the software system. We show the numerous advantages that can be achieved using such tools over currently used approaches and that in the case of risky and high-impact processes, such as in the management of potentially high-consequence facilities such as storage reservoirs, management by a human operator is essential.

DOI:

Year: 2018