Large storage operations under climate change: expanding uncertainties and evolving tradeoffs

Abstract

In a changing climate and society, large storage systems can play a key role for securing water, energy, and food, and rebalancing their cross-dependencies. In this letter, we study the role of large storage operations as flexible means of adaptation to climate change. In particular, we explore the impacts of different climate projections for different future time horizons on the multi-purpose operations of the existing system of large dams in the Red River basin (China-Laos-Vietnam). We identify the main vulnerabilities of current system operations, understand the risk of failure across sectors by exploring the evolution of the system tradeoffs, quantify how the uncertainty associated to climate scenarios is expanded by the storage operations, and assess the expected costs if no adaptation is implemented. Results show that, depending on the climate scenario and the time horizon considered, the existing operations are predicted to change on average from -7 to +5% in hydropower production, +35 to +520% in flood damages, and +15 to +160% in water supply deficit. These negative impacts can be partially mitigated by adapting the existing operations to future climate, reducing the loss of hydropower to 5%, potentially saving around 34.4 million US$ year -1 at the national scale. Since the Red River is paradigmatic of many river basins across south east Asia, where new large dams are under construction or are planned to support fast growing economies, our results can support policy makers in prioritizing responses and adaptation strategies to the changing climate.

Calibration of Spatially Distributed Hydrological Processes and Model Parameters in SWAT Using Remote Sensing Data and an Auto-Calibration Procedure: A Case Study in a Vietnamese River Basin

“…Both the Red River and Day Basin have been exposed to various hydrological research activities before, e.g., [8,[50][51][52] on hydrological and water quality modelling. Using the rating curve suggested in [50], discharge at two locations (i.e., Ninh Binh and Phu Ly) was reconstructed from the year 2000 up to 2013.…”

“…The Day Basin encompasses the capital city of Hanoi (population in 2015: 7.5 million inhabitants) in the northeast and several major economic centers located downstream, such as Nam Dinh (population: 1.8 million) and Ninh Binh (population: 0.9 million). Both the Red River and Day Basin have been exposed to various hydrological research activities before, e.g., [8,[50][51][52] on hydrological and water quality modelling. Using the rating curve suggested in [50], discharge at two locations (i.e., Ninh Binh and Phu Ly) was reconstructed from the year 2000 up to 2013.…”

Scenario-based fitted Q-iteration for adaptive control of water reservoir systems under uncertainty

“…These results demonstrate that the control policy performance is sensitive to the climate scenario that will realize. Moreover, the uncertainty in the scenarios is transferred and amplified when evaluated in terms of policy performance (Giuliani et al, 2016a). The results in Table 1 suggest that the most challenging scenario is w −5 (first column).…”

Time-varying parameter models for catchments with land use change: the importance of model structure

“…This is also particularly relevant for water resource management which requires reliable estimates of water availability, both in terms of volume and timing, to properly allocate resources between different water uses and to mitigate flood damage. Vietnam has built many reservoirs in the last decades and more are planned because they are considered to be fundamentally important for electricity production, flood control, water supply and irrigation, ultimately contributing to the development of the country (Giuliani et al, 2016).…”