Citation:
A. J. Adeloye, B.-S. Soundharajan. C. S. P. Ojha and R. Remesan. (2016) Effect of Hedging-Integrated Rule Curves on the Performance of the Pong Reservoir (India) During Scenario-Neutral Climate Change Perturbations. Water Resources Management, Vol.30, Iss.2, pp445–470
Abstract:
This study has evaluated the effects of improved, hedging-integrated reservoir rule
curves on the current and climate-change-perturbed future performances of the Pong reservoir,
India. The Pong reservoir was formed by impounding the snow- and glacial-dominated Beas
River in Himachal Pradesh. Simulated historic and climate-change runoff series by the
HYSIM rainfall-runoff model formed the basis of the analysis. The climate perturbations used
delta changes in temperature (from 0° to +2 °C) and rainfall (from −10 to +10 % of annual
rainfall). Reservoir simulations were then carried out, forced with the simulated runoff
scenarios, guided by rule curves derived by a coupled sequent peak algorithm and genetic
algorithms optimiser. Reservoir performance was summarised in terms of reliability, resilience,
vulnerability and sustainability. The results show that the historic vulnerability reduced from
61 % (no hedging) to 20 % (with hedging), i.e., better than the 25 % vulnerability often
assumed tolerable for most water consumers. Climate change perturbations in the rainfall
produced the expected outcomes for the runoff, with higher rainfall resulting in more runoff
inflow and vice-versa. Reduced runoff caused the vulnerability to worsen to 66 % without
hedging; this was improved to 26 % with hedging. The fact that improved operational practices
involving hedging can effectively eliminate the impacts of water shortage caused by climate
change is a significant outcome of this study.