Flooding Prevention of the Demer River using Model Predictive Control

In order to prevent flooding along the Demer in Belgium, the local water administrations has installed hyraulic structures and flood reservoirs along the river. Though these actions have reduced the damage and frequency of flooding events, simulations have shown that an improved regulation could further decrease the flood risk. In this study a real time control procedure is being developed by means of model predictive control. For this purpose a full hydrodynamic model of the river basin has been simplified and a conceptual river model built in order to limit the model computational times. Afterwards a model predictive controller is built and used for flood control. A comparison is made between the performances of the model predictive controller and the currently used controller.