Use of Flood-Control Reservoirs for Drought Management

During periods of drought, an important goal of water-resource management is the establishment of realistic reservoir operating policies for water allocation, especially for a river system involved with flood-control reservoirs. This paper discusses optimization models for the flood-control reservoir operations at varied levels of drought severity. It is assumed that for a certain drought-severity level, there will be corresponding minimum demands at downstream control points and maximum inflows to reservoirs. A constant reservoir yield was estimated for each reservoir, based on the maximum duration of historic drought events on the 70% truncation level. Based on the drought evaluation, optimization models at the 70%, 80%, 90%, and 95% levels of drought severity were developed and applied to a river system involved with four flood-control reservoirs in the Scioto River Basin in central Ohio.