Computer Operated River Basin: Murrumbidgee River, NSW, Australia

The Murrumbidgee River is a major river of New South Wales, Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It is a major tributary of the Murray-Darling River and travels more than 1,500 km from the foot of Peppercorn Hill in the Fiery Range of the Snowy Mountains, through the ACT (Canberra), to a confluence with the Murray-Darling.

The river drains a basin of about 80,000 km² with its headwater at over 1,600 masl. Waters from the upper basin (which includes the ACT) are stored in two major dams, Burrinjuck and Bloweridge. From there, the river feeds a predominantly agricultural area and irrigation districts on its way to the Murray-Darling.

A multi-year drought has significantly reduced the water available for agriculture, the mainstay of the local economy. Improved efficiency of water use, reduction of losses and spillage, and the optimal allocation of the available water resources to domestic use and irrigation, but also meeting environmental water demands, are thus important topics.

COR: Computer Operated River Basin under the auspices of the "Water for Rivers" project envisions the use of operational control and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) for an improved, more efficient management of the river, and the allocation and "precision delivery" of irrigation water in particular, using a combination of open channel flow control and real-time simulation based operational control, using simulation-based multi-criteria real-time optimization.

In collaboration with RUBICON Australia Pty Ltd. WaterWare is being configured for a POC (proof of concept) application to the Upper part of the Murrumbidgee basin (from the two reservoirs to Narrandera) for NSW Sate Water corporation, responsible for the operation of the river system.

Major Project Objectives: Overall: improve the efficiency of water use in the basin (eventually measurable as net economic benefit including the valuation of environmental water use.

ComputerOperatedRiver ON-LINE DEVELOPMENT VERSION   Final Report (pdf)

• At a strategic level:
  • optimize water allocation and use including an effective water market;

• At an operational level:
  exact delivery to minimize spill/losses BY:
  • predicting "unexpected" tributary contributions using numerical weather forecasts and rainfall- runoff modeling;
  • "precision" release (and use of intermediate storage/control) based on improved travel time/loss modeling
  • better control of environmental water (timing)
  • verify/test water orders for plausibility (based on farm/irrigation water use forecasts) (including those orders [3/4 !] never received :) provide feedback to the users (eventually) on "better" alternatives, or assumptions made.
  • simulate "improved control" to demonstrate needs for better instrumentation/SCADA, real-time monitoring and telemetry, intelligent water meters.