Simulating Reservoir Operation Using a Recurrent Neural Network Algorithm

The reservoir is an important hydraulic engineering measure for human utilization and management of water resources. Additionally, a reasonable and effective reservoir operating plan is essential for realizing reservoir function. To explore the application of a deep learning algorithm on the field of reservoir operations, a recurrent neural network (RNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), and gated recurrent unit (GRU) are employed to predict outflows for the Xiluodu (XLD) reservoir. Meanwhile, this paper summarized the law of the effect of parameter setting on model performance compared to the simulation performance of three models, and analyzed the main factors that affect reservoir operation to provide the reference for future model of application research. Results show (1) the number of iterations and hidden nodes mainly influence the model precision, and the former has more effect than the latter, and the batch size mainly affects the calculated speed; (2) all three models can predict the reservoir outflow accurately and efficiently; (3) the operating decision generated by three models can implement the flood control and power generation goal of the reservoir and meet the operating regulation; and (4) under different hydrological periods, the influence factors of reservoir operation and their importance are different.