Resolving Disputes over Reservoir-River Operation

The main objective of this work is to allocate water with acceptable quality from a reservoir-river system to different water users and to determine the maximum acceptable pollution load that each user discharges to the river. To achieve this, a bargaining model is developed based on a system dynamics approach, and it is compared with an alternative model based on the Nash bargaining theory. The quality of water released from the reservoir is assessed considering selective withdrawal schemes, obtained from schemes based on operating rules derived from an artificial neural network (ANN) and a K-nearest neighborhood (NN) model. A river water-quality simulation model is also linked with the two bargaining models. These models are then applied to the Karkheh reservoir-river system and using a 50-year monthly time series of qualitative and quantitative data of this system. Finally, the performance criteria for the results of the models are determined and compared. This study shows the significant value of the system dynamics approach in resolving disputes over water allocation among stakeholders/water users of reservoir-river systems considering the water-quality aspects. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IR.1943-4774.0000292. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.