Worldwide, reservoirs are used to buffer against both extreme floods and extreme droughts. However, operations favoring each of these and other management objectives conflict. Fortunately, tradeoffs in operations can often be mitigated by using hydrologic forecasts to condition release decisions, and significant research has investigated the value of using forecasts for this purpose. However, these studies have struggled with how to quantify forecast value in multi-objective contexts where the benefits may accrue unevenly to different objectives that stakeholders value differently. To address this research gap, we introduce a new metric for quantifying forecast value on multi-objective problems: the average improvement on each objective when moving from a solution that does not use forecast information (a baseline solution) to solutions that use forecast information outperform the baseline solution on all objectives. We call this metric “average domination” and use it to investigate whether and how the value of forecast information for multi-objective reservoir operations changes with different flood protection constraints, using the Red River Basin in Vietnam as an example. To assess this, we design multi-objective operations at four reservoirs in the basin both with and without forecast information conditioning release decisions under constraints that the operations ensure protection to downstream water levels with either 100-year or 500-year return levels. Based on the average domination metric, we find that in the Red River Basin, the value of forecast information for all objectives is the same or greater under the more severe 500-year flood design requirement. These findings, identified by our new metric, illustrate that it can be especially beneficial to condition operations on forecast information when stakeholders strongly favor higher levels of risk aversion for flood protection.

中文翻译：

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平均支配：一种新的多目标价值度量，用于评估不同洪水设计水位下水库调度的预测效益

在世界范围内，水库被用来缓冲极端洪水和极端干旱。然而，有利于这些目标和其他管理目标的运营是相互冲突的。幸运的是，通过使用水文预报来调节释放决策，通常可以减轻运营中的权衡，并且大量研究已经调查了为此目的使用预报的价值。然而，这些研究一直在努力解决如何在多目标背景下量化预测价值的问题，在多目标背景下，利益相关者重视不同的不同目标的收益可能会不均匀地增加。为了弥补这一研究差距，我们引入了一种新的指标来量化多目标问题的预测值：从不使用预测信息的解决方案（基线解决方案）转向使用预测信息的解决方案时，每个目标的平均改进程度优于使用预测信息的解决方案所有目标的基线解决方案。我们将这个指标称为“平均支配”，并用它来研究多目标水库调度的预测信息的价值是否以及如何随着不同的防洪约束而变化，以越南红河流域为例。为了评估这一点，我们在流域内的四个水库设计了多目标操作，无论是否有预测信息调节释放决策，在操作确保以 100 年或 500 年回报水平保护下游水位的约束下。基于平均控制指标，我们发现在红河流域，在更严格的500年一遇洪水设计要求下，所有目标的预报信息价值相同或更大。我们的新指标确定的这些发现表明，当利益相关者强烈支持提高防洪风险规避水平时，根据预测信息调整操作尤其有益。