Optimal Regional Water Network Management in Drought Conditions: the Catalonia Case Study

In the present work, Model Predictive Control (MPC) is applied to the regional water network of Catalonia, which consists of several dams in the Llobregat and Ter rivers, a desalination plant and a treated water recirculation system. The objective is to evaluate the impact of these two latter alternative sources to guarantee water supply for prolonged drought periods. The MPC formulation minimizes the multi-objective cost function, considering specific operational objectives, such as flow controls, tank levels and ecological flows, weighted according to their relative importance. Two cases are analyzed: with and without alternative sources. The simulation shows an improvement by using alternative sources, significantly delaying water depletion and allowing for greater network resilience in with limited supply.