The water resources sustainability is becoming an important issue in consideration of hydrologic uncertainty by global warming and climate change. This study is to assess the water supply performance for the major multipurpose dams using sustainability index. Parameters, mostly utilized in water resources system assessment, are selected in respect of applicability and flexibility, and those parameters are used as a variable of the composite index. In practice, the composite index including reliability, resiliency, vulnerability and maximum deficit are applied to 15 multipurpose dams and 4 major basins. And to conclude, Daechungdam in the Geum river basin and Imhadam, Hapchondam and Namgangdam in the Nakdong river basin show low sustainability comparing with other dams. The Nakdong river basin needs to develop alternatives to improve water supply stability because it indicates the most poor sustainability level.

Selecting the evaluation index to determine water resources system design yield is an important problem for water resources engineers. Reliability, resilience and vulnerability are three widely used indices for yield analysis. However, there is an overlap region between indices as well as resilience and vulnerability can show improvement in non-monotonic phenomena although yield condition becomes worse. These problems are usually not recognized and the decisions are made according to calculated estimates in real situation. The reason for this is caused by a diverse characteristics of water resources system such as seasonal variability of hydrologic characteristics and water demands. In this study, the applicability of resilience and vulnerability for multi indices application in addition to reliability which is applied generally is examined. Based on highly seasonal irrigation water demand ratio, the correlation and non-monotonic phenomena of each index are analyzed for seven selected reservoirs. Yongdam reservoir which supplies constant water supply showed the general tendency, but Chungju, Andong, Namgang and other reservoirs which supplies irrigation water showed clear non-monotonic phenomena in resilience and vulnerability.

In water resources planning, to decide proper water supply capacity is a very important task. Once water supply system such as a dam is decided, it will affect whole range of water resources circumstances for a long time. Even though systematic approaches have been implemented since 1980, many problems are still prevail in reality. Especially some issues related to the reliability analysis method used in planning dams in Korea have been persistently brought up. This study is to diagnose problems on the reliability criterion in water supply capacity assessment of water resources systems and discuss a valid method. As a result, the estimates by the different analysis time intervals, in case of the temporal reliability, show no large difference, but there is a large difference when assessment time intervals are differently applied. The volumetric reliability accounts for 2～3% higher than that of the temporal reliability, and resiliency and vulnerability also show large differences by the analysis time intervals.