By Elizabeth A. Eschenbach, Timothy Magee, Edith Zagona, Morgan Goranflo, and Richard Shane. Published in the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Vol. 127, No. 2, March/April, 2001.

Abstract: Many authors have documented the minimal use of optimization in practical day-to-day multipurpose reservoir operations. The RiverWare decision support system is a flexible general river basin modeling tool that allows water resources engineers to both simulate and optimize the management of multipurpose reservoir systems for daily operations. This paper describes RiverWare’s optimization capabilities and its use by Tennessee Valley Authority operations schedulers. Input data requirements include (1) physical and economic characteristics of the system; (2) prioritized policy goals; and (3) parameters for automatic linearization. RiverWare automatically generates and efficiently solves a multiobjective, preemptive linear goal programming formulation of a reservoir system. An advanced feature of RiverWare is that both the physical model of the river basin and the operating policy are defined and easily modified by the modeler through an interactive graphical user interface. Any modifications are automatically incorporated into the linear preemptive goal program. RiverWare’s combination of detailed system representation, policy expression flexibility, and computational speed make it suitable for use in routine daily scheduling of large complex multiobjective reservoir systems.