Model predictive control for flood mitigation: A Wivenhoe Dam case study

In January 2011, the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, was flooded after an extreme rainfall event. The performance of Wivenhoe Dam, built primarily to protect the city from flood, has been questioned. In this paper, a simplified model predictive control (MPC) scheme that automatically sets dam outflow in order to mitigate downstream flooding is developed and evaluated using data for Wivenhoe Dam and the 2011 flood event. Insofar as the simplicity of employed simulation model admits comparison to observed flood event, the proposed MPC scheme is shown to exhibit promising performance when compared with the existing flood mitigation strategy.