Combined use of optimization and simulation models in river basin planning

Simulation models have proved extremely useful as an aid to river basin planning. All suffer a common difficulty, however, since the analyst himself must formulate the physical design to be studied in each computer run. If the basin is large and offers a variety of development opportunities, the number of alternative system plans from which he must choose can be extremely large. This paper reports on an investigation of the use of analytical optimization models to ‘screen’ the set of possible plans and to select a small number worthy of simulation analysis. The Delaware River basin being used as an example, deterministic and stochastic optimizing models have been developed and applied to both static and dynamic (multiperiod) planning problems. The resulting designs have been analyzed by using a large‐scale digital simulation model of the basin so that the ability of the screening models to identify high‐valued alternatives can be evaluated. In this context the results indicate considerable promise for the combined use of optimization and simulation models.