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Modelling of Rivers for Control Design

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Book cover System Identification, Environmental Modelling, and Control System Design

Abstract

Agriculture is the world wide biggest consumer of water. However, a large portion of the water is wasted due to inefficient distribution from lakes and reservoirs via rivers to farms. More efficient water distribution can be achieved with the help of improved control and decision support systems, but in order to design such systems, river models are required. Traditionally, the Saint Venant equations which are partial differential equations, have been used for modelling rivers. They are however difficult to use for control design and thus, simpler alternative models are sought. In this paper, system identification techniques are used to obtain models which are useful for control design. We show through experimental validation and actual control design that simple time-delay and integrator-delay models are sufficient for control design.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Obtained by approximating the rivers by straight lines between the hydraulic structures (HS) on the map.

  2. 2.

    Only the water levels are measured. The flows are obtained from the water levels using rating curves.

  3. 3.

    We have chosen Moorngag rather than Lake Nillahcootie as the upstream end of the reach simply because there are better data available from Moorngag.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by The Farms Rivers and Markets Project, an initiative of Uniwater and funded by the National Water Commission, the Victorian Water Trust, The Dookie Farms 2000 Trust (Tallis Trust) and the University of Melbourne and supported by the Departments of Sustainability and Environment and Primary Industry, the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority and Goulburn-Murray Water. The first author also gratefully acknowledge the financial support from National ICT Australia (NICTA). NICTA is funded by the Australian Government as represented by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the Australian Research Council through the ICT Centre of Excellence program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National ICT Australia, Victoria Research Lab, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Mathias Foo

  2. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Su Ki Ooi & Erik Weyer

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  1. Mathias Foo
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Correspondence to Mathias Foo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Engineering, RMIT University, Swanston Street 10, Melbourne, 3000, Victoria, Australia

    Liuping Wang

  2. Centre de Recherche en, Automatique de Nancy, Université Nancy I, Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy CX, France

    Hugues Garnier

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Foo, M., Ooi, S.K., Weyer, E. (2012). Modelling of Rivers for Control Design. In: Wang, L., Garnier, H. (eds) System Identification, Environmental Modelling, and Control System Design. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-974-1_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-974-1_21

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

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