Deltares signed a cooperative contract with Taolinkou Reservoir Authority and Hebei Provincial Institute of Water Resources on hydrological forecasting and reservoir optimization for Taolinkou reservoir at Hebei Province. It is under the governmental cooperation between Province Zuid-Holland (Netherlands) and Hebei Province (China), in the field of water. This project is the first reservoir management project in China that Deltares is leading and will last for 2 years. The role of Deltares is to provide technical solutions for improving the hydrological forecasting and reservoir operation strategies. Deltares’ software WFlow, RTC-Tools and Delft-FEWS will be applied to this project. Deltares will also provide several trainings to build up capacities of Taolinkou Reservoir Authority.

The reservoir is mainly used for water supply, in combination with flood control. The client has a lumped hydrological model to run streamflow “forecast” based on observed precipitation. The results are inaccurate and strongly affect the optimal use of water. The goal of this project is to improve the hydrological forecasting by introducing distributed hydrological model in combination with meteorological forecasting information, furthermore, to optimize water use.

The results of the project will be an automatic forecasting and operational system (using FEWS) that generates / improves hydrological forecasts and reservoir operation strategies. Optimal reservoir operation will increase the efficiency of water use. It is extremely important for such an area where water shortage becomes more and more severe.