A Stochastic Dynamic Programming Model for the Operation of the High Aswan Dam

Abstract

With the construction of the High Aswan Dam in Egypt, reliable irrigation throughout the whole year and the use of water for the generation of a high percentage of the electricity needs of the country are possible. Moreover, as a result of the construction of the High Aswan Dam, some important changes in the hydraulic regime of the river occurred; in particular, due to the absence of suspended material downstream of Aswan, increasing concern exists about the prevention of bank erosion of the river channel. This report presents a stochastic dynamic programming model to obtain guidelines for the operation of the dam, taking into consideration the conflicting nature of the purposes for which the dam is to be operated. For the solution of the model, a successive approximations method is used in which advantage is taken of some special characteristics of the functions involved in the model in order to provide a computationally efficient algorithm. Some examples, for several combinations of parameters of the system, are presented and the policies obtained tested using a simulation model. These results are compared with the ones obtained when a more heuristic approach to the operation problem is used.