Reservoir Operations to Mitigate Drought Effects With a Hedging Policy Triggered by the Drought Prevention Limiting Water Level

Abstract

Abstract Severe drought events worldwide have considerably unfavorable effects on social and economic development. This paper proposes a hedging policy triggered by the seasonal drought prevention limiting water level (DPLWL) for reservoir operations during a drought event. By using this hedging policy, water resources managers can determine operating policies for drought emergence management according to specific drought conditions. A modeling framework that determines the seasonal DPLWL under different drought conditions is developed based on long‐term hydrological and meteorological information and optimal reservoir operation schemes. In particular, Fisher's optimal partitioning algorithm is applied to identifying the seasonality of the DPLWL based on hydroclimatological factors and reservoir storage conditions. The multireservoir system in the Yellow River Basin is used as a case study to assess the performance of the hedging policy triggered by DPLWLs. The results show that DPLWL has a significant advantage over the standard reservoir operation rules when dealing with multireservoir operation for drought mitigation.