Development of an Optimal Reservoir Operation Scheme Using Extended Evolutionary Computing Algorithms Based on Conflict Resolution Approach: A Case Study

Optimal reservoir operation and water allocation are critical issues in sustainable water resource management due to increasing water demand. Multiplicity of stockholders with different objectives and utilities makes reservoir operation a complicated problem with a variety of constraints and objectives to be considered. In this case, the conflict resolution models can be efficiently used to determine the optimal water allocation scheme considering the utility and relative authority of different stakeholders. In this study, the Nash product is used for formulation of the objective function of a reservoir water allocation model. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to determine the importance of each stockholder in bargaining for water. The Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) and the Imperialism Competitive Algorithm (ICA) are applied to solve the proposed optimization model. System performance indices including reliability, resiliency and vulnerability are used to evaluate the performance of optimization algorithms. The simplest and most often-used reservoir policy (Standard Operating Policy, SOP) is also used in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed models. The proposed model is applied to the Karkheh River-Reservoir system located in south western part of Iran as a case study. Results show the significance of the application of conflict resolution models, such as the Nash theory and proposed optimization algorithms, for water allocation in the regional scale especially in complicated water supply systems.