Optimizing operation of reservoir for agricultural water supply using firefly algorithm

The largest amount of water in Iran is used in agricultural sector. Thus، efficient use of water in this sector will be significantly effective in maintaining water resources and optimum use of available water. In many regions، surface reservoirs are responsible for providing water to downstream agriculture. Optimal operation of reservoir is one of the major parts of surface water resource optimization. So far، several optimization approaches have been used، among them، the most popular methods are Evolutionary Algorithms. In this study، Firefly Algorithm (FA)، as a new method، was proposed for optimal operating of Bazoft reservoir. The operation modeling was carried out for a period of 120 months related to 1986 to 1995 years. The considered objective function was defined as minimizing the sum of squared differences between the demands and the release from the reservoir divided by maximum demand during operation. The model performance was examined compared to Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). These two mentioned algorithms are known as common and standard methods. The results indicated that firefly algorithm can better perform than other methods. The mean value of the objective function of this method was 0. 408، and the mean of the objective function for the GA and PSO were 0. 618 and 0. 913، respectively. In addition، FA has created less deficiency values and milder deficiency compares to GA and PSO.