RESERVOIR STORAGE REALLOCATION ANALYSIS WITH PC

Reallocation of storage may increase a reservoir’s capability to satisfy municipal and industrial water-supply demands. The reallocation, however, simultaneously may decrease the reservoir’s capability to satisfy competing demands. I developed a PC-based reservoir-operation simulator to provide information about such trade-offs. The simulator accounts for: (1) Gain and loss of water in the reservoir; (2) gain and loss of water between the reservoir and a downstream demand point and (3) loss of water at the downstream point. The user controls the sequence of data preparation and simulation with a set of menus. The user “fills in the blanks” in data-entry screens to define system characteristics, storage allocation, and hydrologic inputs. I designed the output specifically for the PC, and included the capability to write files that may be read by spreadsheet and graphical-display programs. This state-of-the-art interface expedites the edit-simulate- evaluate cycle, permitting the civil engineer to search for solutions to wateruse problems, rather than for solutions to computer-use problems. © ASCE.