Optimal multiyear management of a water supply system under uncertainty: Robust counterpart approach

In this paper, the robust counterpart (RC) approach (Ben-Tal et al., 2009) is applied to optimize management of a water supply system (WSS) fed from aquifers and desalination plants. The water is conveyed through a network to meet desired consumptions, where the aquifers recharges are uncertain. The objective is to minimize the net present value cost of multiyear operation, satisfying operational and physical constraints. The RC is a min-max guided approach, which converts the original problem into a deterministic equivalent problem, requiring only that the uncertain parameters resides within a user-defined uncertainty set. The robust policy obtained by the RC approach is compared with polices obtained by other decision-making approaches including stochastic approaches.