Optimization of an Inter-Basin Water Transfer System in India

Abstract

India, a country with a vast land stretch is having wide variations in topography and climate resulting into large difference in per capita water availability in different regions. A large part of country has sole dependence on Monsoon rains which is uncertain over the time and space. To squeeze the temporal and spatial gap between the demand and availability, Government of India has envisaged a project on Inter-Basin Transfer of Water. There are about 34 proposed transfer links that include many reservoirs, canals, tunnels and pumping facilities etc. At this juncture the perspective plan is ready and preliminary discussions are on to sort out socio-political issues amongst the various states of the Indian Union. This ambitious project requires extraordinary high funds and reduction in the costs can only be achieved through optimization of the capacities of various components. Few attempts on optimization have been accomplished for various links in past. Present study is also an attempt towards minimization of capacities of components of an important link in Central India, the Parbati-Kalisindh-Chambal Link Project. The study includes Large Scale Linear Programming model for optimization using Interior Point Algorithm in MATLAB Environment. The main objective of the present study is to study the impact of the optimization of the capacities in the changed operating policy scenario to maximize the reliability at optimum cost.