Reservoirs operation strategies vary because different reservoirs serve different purposes including hydropower production, water supply, flood protection, or snow production. Yet, a comprehensive overview of where in the world which operation strategies are applied is missing. This thesis aims to compile an overview of different reservoir operation strategies and their application in different regions of the globe. It investigates links between operation strategies, reservoir purpose, and hydro-climate.

The thesis performs a literature review on existing articles and datasets on reservoir operation strategies and purposes. It maps geographical variations in reservoir operation strategies and identifies groups of catchments with similar strategies using clustering techniques. In addition, it tries to establish a relationship between the operation strategy of a reservoir and the climate and hydrological characteristics of the basins it is located in using statistical learning.

Compiling a comprehensive literature and dataset overview, working with large climate and streamflow datasets, statistical analysis/learning (clustering), data visualization

Dr. Manuela Brunner and Jonas Götte (University of Freiburg)

Manuela Brunner manuela.brunner@hydrology.uni-freiburg.de

English or German

1. Giuliani, M., Lamontagne, J. R., Reed, P. M., & Castelletti, A. (2021). A state‐of‐the‐art review of optimal reservoir control for managing conflicting demands in a changing world. Water Resources Research, 57(12). https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR029927

2. Global Dam Watch. (2021). GDW’s core datasets. Http://Globaldamwatch.Org/Data/. http://globaldamwatch.org/data/

3. Lin, N. M., & Rutten, M. (2016). Optimal operation of a network of multi-purpose reservoir: A review. Procedia Engineering, 154, 1376–1384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2016.07.504

4. Petts, G. E. (1999). River regulation. In Environmental Geology (pp. 521–528). Kluwer Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_283

5. Turner, S. W. D., Steyaert, J. C., Condon, L., & Voisin, N. (2021). Water storage and release policies for all large reservoirs of conterminous United States. Journal of Hydrology, 603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126843

6. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). (2019). National Inventory of Dams. https://nid.sec.usace.army.mil/ords/f?p=105:22:8387399986327::NO:::

7. Yassin, F., Razavi, S., Elshamy, M., Davison, B., Sapriza-Azuri, G., & Wheater, H. (2019). Representation and improved parameterization of reservoir operation in hydrological and land-surface models. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 23(9), 3735–3764. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-3735-2019