Reducing the conflict of interest in the optimal operation of reservoirs by linking mesohabitat hydraulic modeling and metaheuristic optimization

The present study proposes a novel framework to optimize the reservoir operation through linking mesohabitat hydraulic modeling and metaheuristic optimization to mitigate environmental impact downstream of the reservoir. Environmental impact function was developed by mesohabitat hydraulic simulation. Then, the developed function was utilized in the structure of the reservoir operation optimization. Different metaheuristic algorithms including practice swarm optimization, invasive weed optimization, differential evolution and biogeography-based algorithm were used to optimize reservoir operation. Root mean square error (RMSE) and reliability index were utilized to measure the performance of algorithms. Based on the results in the case study, the proposed method is robust for mitigating downstream environmental impacts and sustaining water supply by the reservoir. RMSE for mesohabitats is 8%, which indicates the robustness of proposed method to mitigate environmental impacts at downstream. It seems that providing environmental requirements might reduce the reliability of water supply considerably. Differential evolution algorithm is the best method to optimize reservoir operation in the case study.