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Real-time control of urban flooding

Abstract:

Real-time regulation of flood control reservoirs is being researched for the case of the river Demer in Belgium. Model Pbkp_redictive Control (MPC) was tested as a technique for the most optimal regulation of the hydraulic structures that control the reservoir storage in order to minimize the flood risk given the available reservoir storage capacity. However, before MPC could be implemented for this application, possible solutions to a number of obstacles needed to be explored. The obstacles were related to the highly non-linear response of the water system to rainfall and rainfall-runoff; the strong time variability of the state variables in the system; discontinuous changes in the state variables; uncontrollable variables in the system; and multiple regulation objectives and priorities. Based on the simulation of the historical flood events of 1998 and 2002, it was found that after solving these problems MPC is able to regulate flood control reservoirs in a more efficient manner. Regulation objectives can be reached using MPC, while this was not the case for the current system based on fixed regulatory rules set by local water authorities. © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group.