A Parameter Determination Method Aiming to Reproduce Operation Records for an Optimal Operation Model of a Water Supply System with Service Reservoirs

Abstract

Recently a shortage of staff and engineers in a water supply utility has been a considerable concern. Technological assistance is needed for a systematic inheritance of the knowledge of skilled operators to continue a stable water supply for the future. An operation of a water supply system involves multiple objectives to be satisfied, for example, smoothing of flows and settling variation ranges of levels of service reservoirs. Skilled operators have judged actual operations involving the balance between the objectives based on their experience. To construct a practical optimal operation scheduling model of a water supply system, we propose a method that determines an optimal set of parameters on balance between the objectives in the scheduling model. The proposed method minimizes the difference between the operation schedules and the operation records to reproduce practical operations of skilled operators in terms of balance. A case study confirmed that the parameter set determined by the proposed method replicated the objective balance better than a reference parameter set and was more robust to the elapsed time for more than a half year.