Towards the intelligent control of river flooding

Towards the intelligent control of river flooding Conference

Leon, AS, Kanashiro, EA, Gichamo, TZ et al. (2012). Towards the intelligent control of river flooding . 1687-1696. 10.1061/9780784412312.167

This paper presents a new framework for the intelligent control of river flooding. This framework links two components: river system routing (simulation) and optimization. The river system routing component builds upon the application of Performance Graphs (precomputed hydraulics under gradually varied flow scenarios), while the optimization component uses the popular second generation multi-objective evolutionary algorithm Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II). The use of hydraulic performance graphs for river system routing results in a robust and numerically efficient model as most of the computations for the system routing only involves interpolation steps. The proposed framework allows controlled flooding in the event that the capacity of the river system has been exceeded. This controlled flooding is based on weight factors assigned to each reach of the system depending on a hierarchy of risk to losses associated with flooding. Naturally, river reaches that are less prone to flood losses are assigned smaller weight factors and reaches that are more prone to flood losses are assigned larger weight factors. For illustration purposes, the proposed framework was applied to the Boise river system in Idaho. The results show a promising outcome in the application of this model for flood control. © ASCE 2012.