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DROUGHT AND WATER SUPPLY RELIABILITY OF EAST RIVER (DONGJIANG) BASIN IN SOUTH CHINA

Runrun Zhang, Ji Chen, Guangbai Cui


Hohai University, Nanjing, e-mail: runrun@hkucc.hku.hk Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, e-mail: jichen@hku.hk

Abstract Using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the precipitation records from 1952 to 2000, the drought situation over the East River basin in southern China was analyzed. Different drought categories were then selected to represent different drought conditions. The Conditional Reliability Module (CRM) in the Water Right Analysis Package (WRAP) was used to investigate water supply reliability over the East River basin under several supply scenarios, which were created based on different SPI values and different initial reservoir storage levels. The result of the study revealed that reservoir storage plays a crucial role in maintaining the water supply security. To ensure an acceptable reliability of water supply in the region, the Xinfengjiang Reservoir, which is the biggest reservoir in the East River basin, should keep more than 60% of its conservative storage capacity at the beginning of the dry season of the basin, i.e. October. Key words water supply; SPI; WRAP; reliability; East River the drought conditions related to the water supply scenarios were not applied in the study of Chen and Chan (2007), and this paper uses the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) to quantify the drought severity. The SPI is an index based on the probability of precipitation at different temporal scales. Compared with other traditional indices the SPI is appreciated for its versatility in representing drought conditions. In this study, similar to Chen and Chan (2007), the Water Right Analysis Package (WRAP) (Wurbs 2005) is used. The WRAP simulates management of the water resources of river basins under a priority-based water allocation system, and water management and use requirements, policies, practices and facilities are expressed in terms of water rights. In the model, the water resources are simulated using the basin hydrologic information represented by sets of historical monthly streamflow sequences. As a decision-support tool for water management, the Conditional Reliability Module (CRM) in the WRAP is used to analyze the

INTRODUC TION
The East River (Dongjiang in Chinese) is a

vital water source for the intra-basin cities, such as Heyuan (HY), Huizhou (HZ) and Dongguan (DG), and cities located outside the basin, such as Hong Kong (HK), Shenzhen (SZ) and Guangzhou (GZ) (Chen and Chan 2007). The river is supporting the water consumption of over 30 million people. However, with rapid regional socio-economic development since the mid-1980s, the water demand of the region has also increased rapidly, resulting in a threat to water supply security. Furthermore, the upper limit of extracting water from the East River is designed as 10.664 billion m3, and if demand exceeds this limit, then water shortage becomes inevitable, along with the associated socio-economic problems. The evaluation of the balance between water supply and demand of the East River basin was investigated by Chen and Chan (2007). However,

October 20-23 2008, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

reliability of the study periods, and which was also used in the study of Chen and Chan (2007). The CRM is used in conjunction with WRAP and defined as the process of determining the likelihood of meeting water use requirements after a specific circumstance of storage or inflow has occurred (Wurbs 2005).

shows the annual SPIs from 1952 to 2000 for the East River. From the figure, it can be observed that the precipitation conditions in 1971, 1991 and 1963 represent moderate, severe and extreme droughts.

2.2 CRM
In this study, two steps of applying the CRM were used. The first step, the CRM was adopted to simulate the average reliability of water supply of the East River for the period 1952 to 2000. For this period, each water year, which is defined as being from October to September of the next year in the East River, was studied by using the CRM and the same condition of the reservoir storage at the beginning. In the second step, the CRM was applied to obtaining the water supply reliability in the selected drought condition years (i.e. 1971, 1991 and 1963). In the simulation, the streamflow and reservoir storage were allocated among water users based on specified priorities.

2 METHODOLOGY
2.1 DROUGHT MEASURES

The SPI calculation is based on the long-term precipitation records for a desired period. The long-term records are fitted to a probability distribution, which is then transformed into a normal distribution (Edwards and McKee 1997). McKee et al (1993) used the classification system and the SPI to define drought intensities (Table 1). Positive SPI values indicate greater than median precipitation, and negative values indicate less than the median precipitation.
Table1 Classification scale for SPI values category No drought Moderate drought Severe drought Extreme drought

SPI values above -0.99 -1.00 to -1.49 -1.50 to -1.99 -2.00 and less

SIMULATION

3.1 MODEL INPUTS


To drive the WRAP and CRM, main five components should be identified. They are the control points, reservoir characteristics, the natural streamflow and evaporation, the water supply targets and water users priority. The control points are the water sources and the water users. In the East River basin, the control points are Heyuan (HY), Huizhou (HZ), Taiyuan (TY), Shilong (SL), Buoluo (BL) and the Xinfengjiang Reservoir (XFJ) (the biggest reservoir in the East River). Figure 2 shows the East River and these six control points. Xinfengjiang Reservoir contains 76% of total reservoir storage capacity in the East River basin. Its inactive capacity (IC) and conservative capacity (CC) are 4.307 billion m3 and 6.491 billion m3,

In this study, the Precipitation series from 1952 to 2000 over the East River was used to calculate the SPI. The Pearson-III distribution was selected to fit the long-term record. Based on the method of Ju (1998), the Pearson-III distribution was transformed to the normal distribution. Figure 1

Fig. 1

SPI series at the East River

respectively. g297g

Proceedings of 16th IAHR-APD Congress and 3rd Symposium of IAHR-ISHS

as follows. All water diversion targets were satisfied after the basic instream flow demand was met. Then, the water diversion followed the priority, in descending order, of: HK-SZ-HY-HZ-DG-GZ. In addition, for each city the water demand for Residential (R) was satisfied first, and then the demand for industry (I) would be supplied and the demand for agriculture (A) was supplied with the lowest priority.
Fig. 2 The East River basin (left) and the location control points (right)

3.2

WATER SUPPLY SCENARIOS


In the study, the accessible water sources for

The naturalized streamflow and evaporation of all control points were obtained from the simulation of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) (Chen and Wu 2008). The water supply target is different from the study of Chen and Chan (2007). In this study, the water demand projection in 2010 was analyzed, and the water diversion target was obtained by the trend analysis based on the water consumption of all the water rights from 1997 to 2006 (Table 2). From the table, it can bee seen that the total water demand in 2010 is 10626 million m3 which was very close to the limiting amount of 10664 million m3. In this study, the agricultural demand in Hong Kong was neglected, and using HK (O) indicated other sectoral demands except for the residential and the diversion target of GZ from the East River was 8% of its total water demand (other water sources for GZ are the West River and the North River).
Table 2 Requirements for basic instream flow and Water diversion demand in 2010 for all control points Control point City Instream Flow Demand (m3/s) Residential (R) Industrial (I) Agricultural (A) HY HY 78 212 164 HZ HZ 120 294 299 499 487 HK TY SZ DG 150 1398 686 236 827 1235 487 113 435 143 SL GZ

the region are the East River streamflow and the Xinfengjiang Reservoir water storage. Therefore, the water supply scenarios were designed based on different streamflows and initial reservoir water storages. Simulation scenarios constructed by hydrological conditions of selected water year and projected reservoir storage are listed in Table 3.
Table 3 Water supply scenarios Streamflow Exceedence Frequency 88% 94%

Reservoir Storage Levels (Inactive Capacity (IC) Conservative Capacity (CC)) (109 m3) IC (4.307) IC+10%CC (4.956) IC+20%CC (5.605) IC+60%CC (8.202) IC+90%CC (10.149)

Drought Year 1971 Moderate 1991 Severe 1963 Extreme

98%

4
4.1

RESULTS
AVERAGE RELIABILITY

The average reliability of water supply, the likelihood of meeting the projected 2010 water demand when the water supply conditions were the same as the period 1952 to 2000, was obtained by running the WRAP and CRM. Figure 3 shows the simulation results, the percentages of the reliability for different water users with the different Xinfengjiang reservoir storage and the 2010

1386 1725

In the study, water priority order was designed g298g

October 20-23 2008, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

projected water demand.

years (1971, 1991 and 1963) with the same initial reservoir storage 5.605 billion m3 (IC+20%CC).
Table 4 water supply reliability with different drought severities and the initial reservoir storage of IC+20%CC Descending order of water right priority HK(R) HK(O) SZ(R) SZ(I) SZ(A) HY(R) HY(I) HY(A) HZ(R) HZ(I) HZ(A) Rv (%) of Simulation scenarios Moderate 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 87.39 100 100 85.9 92.88 78.51 65.8 75.00 67.21 62.20 89.33 Severe 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 72.29 100 91.76 65.09 85.47 83.33 85.90 83.33 83.33 85.90 85.72 Extreme 100 93.87 81.36 75.00 80.90 75.00 75.00 43.87 75.00 69.49 37.02 66.27 58.33 55.20 58.33 58.33 55.20 62.98

Fig. 3 The reliability of water supply with different initial Xinfengjiang reservoir storage in Oct and projected 2010 water demand for different water consumption sectors at (a) annual scale and (b) monthly scale

DGR) DG(I) DG(A) GZ(R) GZ(I) GZ(A) mean

Figure 3 indicates that the Xinfengjiang Reservoir plays a critical role for securing the water supply over the region. From the figure, it can be seen that the reservoir storage significantly affects the water supply reliability. When 60% of the reservoir conservative capacity was reached, the water demands from all of water consumption sectors can have more than 90% water supply reliability at both temporal scales, annually and monthly, and especially all the residential water demand can be fully met. Consequently, to assure the security of water supply, the Xinfengjiang reservoir storage should not be lower than the volume of IC+60%CC (8.202 billion m3) at the beginning of October in each year. Otherwise, some drought preparedness measures should be taken.

Table 4 shows that six cities (Table 2) need water diverted from the East River. For exploring the severe water supply situation for these cities, three different drought severities (referring to 1971, 1991 and 1963 (Table 3)) are studied. The initial reservoir storage was set as IC+20%CC, because the precipitation records of the East River showed that the dry years usually occur consecutively and the water level (IC+20%CC) is the special operation line for the Xinfengjiang Reservoir. If the reservoir storage is lower than that water level and the related precipitation SPI is negative, the water supply reliability of the region will dramatically decrease. From Table 4, it can be seen that the reliabilities of DG(R) were 92.88%, 85.47% and 66.27% respectively when moderate, severe and extreme droughts occur and the initial Xinfengjing reservoir water storage is 5.605 billion m3 g299g

4.2 RELIABILITY WITH DROUGHT CONDITIONS


Table 4 lists all the water supply reliabilities for different water rights under the selected water

Proceedings of 16th IAHR-APD Congress and 3rd Symposium of IAHR-ISHS

(IC+20%CC) at the beginning of the simulation month, October. For clarifying the simulation result, Figure 4 shows the monthly reliabilities of DG(R) with different drought severities.

beginning of October, it should be considered to use a flexible reservoir operation rule to avoid the possible extreme water shortage in the near future months.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Central Policy Unit of the Government of the HKSAR and the Research Grants Council of the HKSAR (Project No. HKU
Fig. 4 Reliabilities of DG(R) under different drought conditions with the reservoir storage at IC+20%CC

7022-PPR-2).

From Figure 4, it can be observed that the reliability of water supply for the residential sector of Dongguan (DG(R)) was very uneven from one month to another. The figure shows that the Spring season (March, April and May) is the most vulnerable period for the water supply. For a severe drought condition, in Spring season, the reliability of DG(R) will be smaller than 30%, which will cause serious damage to the societal water security. Therefore, a more flexible reservoir operation rule should be designed for avoiding the extreme serious water shortage.

REFERENCES
Chen J, Wu Y (2008) Exploring hydrological process features of the East River (Dongjiang) basin in South China using VIC and SWAT. IAHS Publication 319: 116-123 Chen J, Chan SN (2007) Water resources sustainability in the East River in South China using water rights analysis package. Proceedings of MODSIM07: 1985-1991 Edwards, DC, and McKee TB (1997) Characteristics of 20th century drought in the United States at multiple time scales. Climatology Report Number 972, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado Ju XS, Zou XK, Zhang Q (1998), The method of the climatic drought-flood index and its analysis (Chinese). Journal of Natural Disasters McKee TB, Doesken NJ, and Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. Preprints, 8th Conference on Applied Climatology, pp. 179184. January 1722, Anaheim, California Wurbs, RA (2005) Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP) Modeling System Reference Manual. TR-255, Texas Water Resources Institute, College Station, Texas. 38

CONCLUSION
The main purpose of this study was to

investigate the water supply reliability of the East River under different drought severities and different initial status of the Xinfengjiang reservoir water storage. Different drought severities were defined by the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and the WRAP and CRM were applied to evaluating the water supply reliability. The study revealed that to guarantee the security of the water supply from the East River, the Xinfengjiang reservoir storage should be no less than IC+60%CC at the beginning of October in each year. In addition, if the Xinfengjiang reservoir water level is lower than 98 m (IC+20%CC) at the g300g

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