Author(s): Garcia Hernandez; J. ; Jordan; F. ; Sirvent Gimenez; P. ; Boillat; L. J-; Schleiss; A.

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Abstract: The catchment area of the Upper Rhone River is located in the Swiss Alps. Many hydropower schemes with large reservoirs are located in the watershed, strongly influencing the hydrological regime of the river network. A numerical tool for flood forecast and management of hydropower plants during floods, called MINERVE, has been developed for this catchment area. The goal is to provide significant information about the hydro-meteorological situation and to propose an optimal preventive operating strategy for the existing hydropower schemes. A semidistributed hydrological model was developed to simulate the hydrological and hydraulic behaviour of the complex catchment. The model includes snow-melt, glacier melt, soil infiltration, surface runoff, flood routing in rivers and reservoirs as well as hydropower scheme operations. For the computation of flood prediction, the numerical meteorological forecasts issued from COSMO-LEPS (probabilistic), and COSMO-7 and COSMO-2 (deterministic), provided by MeteoSwiss, have been assimilated. Meteorological predictions are the input to the MINERVE model producing hydrological ensemble forecasts. A real-time flood forecast is provided and a strategy is proposed to identify appropriate preventive operations of the hydropower schemes in order to reduce the flood peaks in the downstream rivers.

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Year: 2009