Analysis of the robustness of an optimisation model considering  uncertainties in water quality parameters.

Abstract

The competing nature of water quality and quantity in a complex water resource system makes water management challenging. The difficulty is exacerbated by the uncertainties inherent with the available data. This study performs analysis of uncertainties in water quality data to identify relative changes in stored water volume. The uncertainty analyses are also aimed to assess impact of climate change on water quality. This work uses multi-objective optimisation approach to achieve optimised storage water volume and water quality in a reservoir. The research outcomes indicate that there are trade-offs associated while optimising water quality and quantity levels. It is found that the trade-off curve is insensitive to water quality changes thereby confirming that the model is resilient to water quality uncertainties, particular to this case study area. Therefore, the decision makers can safely rely on these trade-off curves to make decisions on selective harvesting of water. Through this analysis, robustness of the optimisation model is also confirmed and can be applied to future studies to find optimal values of water quantity and quality parameters.