Multi-Timescale Coordinated Scheduling of Pumped Water Supply and Transfer Systems: Bridging Water Allocation, Economic Operation, and Hydraulic Safety

Coordinating water allocation, pump scheduling, and hydraulic operation is essential for the safe and economical management of pumped water supply and transfer systems. Differences in planning horizons, hydraulic representations, and computational requirements complicate the translation of allocation plans into feasible equipment actions. This critical narrative review synthesizes multi-timescale coordination, economic–hydraulic coupling, and computational reduction methods and compares their applicability across system types and operating conditions. The synthesis identifies delivery windows, storage constraints, and operational feedback as essential links between decision layers. It distinguishes electricity cost savings from energy savings and shows why equipment transitions must be assessed alongside scheduled operating states. Hierarchical decomposition, model reduction, and surrogate models can offer computational benefits while requiring explicit feasibility checks and separate accounting of offline preparation and online decision time. Based on this synthesis, the review proposes a three-layer reference architecture linking water allocation, economic scheduling, and hydraulic execution through defined information exchanges, action-specific acceptance rules, and qualified fallback procedures. Future research should strengthen validation across time scales, uncertainty-aware hydraulic checking, and evaluation of computational performance under engineering operating conditions.