Long-term capacity and failure analysis of the Ruhr reservoir system

In this paper, a long-term capacity analysis is presented for the Ruhr Reservoir System in Germany. Novel in this approach is the combination of a weather generator for creating daily data of precipitation and temperature over a period of several thousand years and a detailed simulation of the complex reservoir system based on a sequence of hydrological and reservoir management components. The long-term analysis is used to provide the probability of a system failure, where such a failure is defined as a violation of the system’s main objectives drinking water supply and environmental flows. Furthermore, the impacts of alternative management scenario’s with respect to the chance of a system failure are investigated.