Neuro-dynamic programming for designing water reservoir network management policies

Stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) can improve the management of a multipurpose water reservoir by generating management policies which are efficient with respect to the management objectives (flood protection, water supply for irrigation, hydropower generation, etc.). The improvement in efficiency is even more remarkable for networks of reservoirs. Unfortunately, SDP is affected by the well-known ‘curse of dimensionality’, i.e. computational time and computer memory occupation increase exponentially with the dimension of the problem (number of reservoirs), and the problem rapidly becomes intractable. Neuro-dynamic programming (NDP) can sensibly mitigate this limitation by approximating Bellman functions with artificial neural networks (ANNs). In this paper the application of NDP to the problem of the management of reservoir networks is introduced. Results obtained in a real-world case study are finally presented.