Research
Thermal and salinity management through multi-objective reservoir operations
A modular, machine-learning-augmented model helps balance water supply, cold-water fisheries, and salinity risks in the Delaware River Basin.
The Delaware River Basin—a critical water source for New York City—faces the challenge of balancing municipal supply, cold-water fisheries, and salinity intrusion. We developed a modular, LSTM-augmented Pywr-DRB model to simulate water supply, stream temperature, and salt-front dynamics in one decision-support framework.
Using multi-objective policy search, we optimize reservoir release rules and examine proactive strategies for reducing thermal stress while sustaining the basin’s other priorities.