Improved heuristic reservoir operation using control curves incorporating the vulnerability norm

Decisions about water releases from dam reservoirs are often guided by rule curves which show target storage levels that should be maintained in the reservoirs in different months of the year. If these targets are unattainable in any month during operation, then a cutback in releases has to be made in that month. However, because of the way they are developed, traditional control curves do not give any guidance on the level of the cutback, implying that the action of the operator may or may not succeed. In this paper, a sequential reservoir analysis technique was used to develop control curves with an integral attribute of vulnerability, which defines the level of cutback. The superiority of the new control curves over traditional ones was demonstrated by using them to simulate some hypothetical reservoirs.