Optimal Operation of Multipurpose Pool of Elk City Lake

Abstract

A stochastic dynamic programming is used to develop optimal policies for operating the multipurpose pool of the Elk City Lake in Kansas with serially correlated inflows. The model determines a long‐term operating policy to minimize the expected average annual loss. Using the developed optimal policy to operate the lake from 1967 through 1977 shows a marked reduction in the expected annual losses as compared with the historical operation. The sensitivity of the optimal policy and computation effort to the number of discrete states used is also investigated.