Flood Regulation By Means Of Model Predictive Control

In this chapter flooding regulation of the river Demer is discussed. The Demer is a river located in Belgium. In the past the river was the victim of several serious flooding events. Therefore, the local water administration provided the river with flood reservoirs and hydraulical structures in order to be able to better manage the water flows in the Demer basin. Though this measures have significantly reduced the floods in the basin, the recent floods in 1998 and 2002 showed that this was not enough. In order to improve this situation a pilot project is started with as main goal to regulate the Demer with a model predictive controller. In this chapter the results of this project are discussed. First a simplified model of the Denier basin is derived based on the reservoir model. The model is calibrated and validated using historical data obtained from the local water administration. On the one hand the resulting model is accurate enough to capture the most important dynamics of the river; on the other hand the model is fast enough to be used in a real-time setting. Afterwards, the focus will be shifted to the model predictive controller. The use of the model predictive controller will be justified by comparing it to other control strategies used in practice for flood regulation. Then, the more technical details of the model predictive controller will be discussed in more detail. Finally the chapter will be concluded by historical simulations in which the model predictive controller is compared with the current control strategy used by the local water administration.