Hydro-economic risk assessment in the eastern Nile River basin

Arjoon, Diane; Mohamed, Yasir A.; Goor, Quentin; Tilmant, Amaury

doi:10.1016/j.wre.2014.10.004

Cited by 54 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Arjoon et al (2014) [20] come to the same results, arguing that this is a trade-off between HPP and releasing flow regulation downstream. The exploitation of the reservoir capacity is much lower in the other scenarios.…”

Section: Regular Operation and Hppmentioning

confidence: 72%

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Management Scenarios of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Their Impacts under Recent and Future Climates

Liersch

Koch

Hattermann

2017

Water

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Close to the border with Sudan, Ethiopia is currently building the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa with a storage volume corresponding to approximately 1.5 years of the mean discharges of the Blue Nile. This endeavor is controversially debated in the public and the scientific literature. Contributing to this discussion, by shading some light on climate change issues, an eco-hydrological model, equipped with a reservoir module, was applied to investigate downstream hydrological impacts during filling and regular operation, the latter considering climate change projected by an ensemble of 10 global and regional climate models. Our results show that at the earliest after 20 months, the dam could produce hydroelectric power. Full supply level may be reached after four years or not at all, depending on filling policies and assumptions of seepage rates. Under recent hydro-climatic conditions, the dam may produce 13 TWh −a , which is below the envisaged target of 15.7 TWh −a . The ensemble mean suggests slightly increasing hydropower production in the future. Almost independently of the operation rules, the highly variable discharge regime will be significantly altered to a regime with almost equal flows each month. Achieving a win-win situation for all riparian countries requires a high level of cooperation in managing the Eastern Nile water resources.

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Section: Regular Operation and Hppmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…The Blue Nile River rises in Lake Tana in the Ethiopian Highlands, and the catchment area of the UBN delineated in this study covers an area of 172,000 km 2 (see Figure 1). The flow regime of the UBN in Ethiopia is still largely natural with a high seasonal and inter-annual variability [20]. …”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Management Scenarios of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Their Impacts under Recent and Future Climates

Liersch

Koch

Hattermann

2017

Water

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“…This ensures a steady-state condition that is not influenced by initial hydrological and storage conditions or by any end-effect distortion due to reservoir depletion that occurs as the end of the planning period approaches (Arjoon et al, 2014). As previously explained, the amount of water allocated to hydropower agents is equal to the amount demanded.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…6) is online. Allocation decisions are chosen to maximize expected net economic returns from irrigated agriculture and hydropower generation over a planning horizon of 10 years and for 30 hydrologic sequences (see Arjoon et al (2014) for a description of the model).…”

Section: Water Allocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The traditional approach to estimating the economic benefits of cooperation relies on hydro-economic modeling (Arjoon et al, 2014;Jeuland et al, 2014;Tilmant and Kinzelbach, 2012;Teasley and McKinney, 2011;Whittington et al, 2005). These studies present various implementation strategies representing various levels of cooperation, but all show that there are significant economic benefits to be had through basin-wide cooperation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sharing water and benefits in transboundary river basins

Arjoon

Tilmant

Herrmann

2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The equitable sharing of benefits in transboundary river basins is necessary to solve disputes among riparian countries and to reach a consensus on basin-wide development and management activities. Benefit-sharing arrangements must be collaboratively developed to be perceived not only as efficient, but also as equitable in order to be considered acceptable to all riparian countries. The current literature mainly describes what is meant by the term benefit sharing in the context of transboundary river basins and discusses this from a conceptual point of view, but falls short of providing practical, institutional arrangements that ensure maximum economic welfare as well as collaboratively developed methods for encouraging the equitable sharing of benefits. In this study, we define an institutional arrangement that distributes welfare in a river basin by maximizing the economic benefits of water use and then sharing these benefits in an equitable manner using a method developed through stakeholder involvement. We describe a methodology in which (i) a hydrological model is used to allocate scarce water resources, in an economically efficient manner, to water users in a transboundary basin, (ii) water users are obliged to pay for water, and (iii) the total of these water charges is equitably redistributed as monetary compensation to users in an amount determined through the application of a sharing method developed by stakeholder input, thus based on a stakeholder vision of fairness, using an axiomatic approach. With the proposed benefit-sharing mechanism, the efficiency-equity trade-off still exists, but the extent of the imbalance is reduced because benefits are maximized and redistributed according to a key that has been collectively agreed upon by the participants. The whole system is overseen by a river basin authority. The methodology is applied to the Eastern Nile River basin as a case study. The described technique not only ensures economic efficiency, but may also lead to more equitable solutions in the sharing of benefits in transboundary river basins because the definition of the sharing rule is not in question, as would be the case if existing methods, such as game theory, were applied, with their inherent definitions of fairness.

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Using stochastic dual dynamic programming in problems with multiple near‐optimal solutions

Rougé

Tilmant

2016

Water Resources Research

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Stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) is one of the few algorithmic solutions available to optimize large‐scale water resources systems while explicitly considering uncertainty. This paper explores the consequences of, and proposes a solution to, the existence of multiple near‐optimal solutions (MNOS) when using SDDP for mid or long‐term river basin management. These issues arise when the optimization problem cannot be properly parametrized due to poorly defined and/or unavailable data sets. This work shows that when MNOS exists, (1) SDDP explores more than one solution trajectory in the same run, suggesting different decisions in distinct simulation years even for the same point in the state‐space, and (2) SDDP is shown to be very sensitive to even minimal variations of the problem setting, e.g., initial conditions—we call this “algorithmic chaos.” Results that exhibit such sensitivity are difficult to interpret. This work proposes a reoptimization method, which simulates system decisions by periodically applying cuts from one given year from the SDDP run. Simulation results obtained through this reoptimization approach are steady state solutions, meaning that their probability distributions are stable from year to year.

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Hydro-economic risk assessment in the eastern Nile River basin

Cited by 54 publications

References 15 publications

Management Scenarios of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Their Impacts under Recent and Future Climates

Management Scenarios of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Their Impacts under Recent and Future Climates

Sharing water and benefits in transboundary river basins

Using stochastic dual dynamic programming in problems with multiple near‐optimal solutions

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