Application of Drought Early Warning System for Operation of Zayandehrud Damir

Application of drought early warning system is an important strategy for drought management. It is more pronounced in the arid regions where dams have vital role to overcome water shortages. This papers aims to develop and apply such a system that includes three main components, which are 1) drought monitoring, 2) forecasting inflows and water demands and 3) calculation of a warning index for decision about drought management. The system is presented for the Zayanderud Dam. For this, the future six months river inflows and demands are forecasted at different probabilistic levels using the artificial neural networks and considering respected uncertainties. Also, five drought levels are indicated based on the historical records of dam’s storage and the self organizing feature map technique. Furthermore, a drought alert index (DAI) is defined using current storage of dam and the forecasted flows and demands. Finally, the different alert levels are estimated, which vary from normal to sever water scarcity. The results showed that application of the designed warning system can have effective role in the dam’s operation, rationing policy and reducing drought losses.