Flood control of the Demer by using Model Predictive Control

•MPC can be used for flood control and set-point control of rivers with reservoirs.•MPC uses the water reservoir in an optimal way to prevent rivers from flooding.•The buffer capacity of the reservoir is restored in a fast way.•Selecting gate discharges as control variables simplifies the optimisation problem.•Performance of MPC is tested on a model of the Demer, a river in Belgium.

It is shown how Model Predictive Control can be used for flood control of river systems modelled with real data. A linear model for the Demer, a river in Belgium, is derived, which is used inside the optimisation problem solved by the controller. This optimisation problem is formulated such that the controller can be used for set-point and flood control. A Kalman filter is used as a state estimator. Closed loop simulations performed with a full hydrodynamic model of the Demer in combination with historical rainfall data show that the proposed control scheme outperforms the current control strategy.