Heuristic Branch-and-Bound Method for Ground Water Development Planning

Abstract

A ground water development planning problem considering the minimization of both fixed installation and variable operation costs is formulated using the response matrix method. This mixed integer, nonlinear problem is solved using penalty coefficient (PC) methods, the pseudointeger method (PIM), and a heuristic branch-and-bound (HBB) method. An HBB technique was developed based upon combining the concepts of the branch-and-bound method with heuristic knowledge about the potential pumping yield of pumping cells. All methods were applied to test problems and their performance compared using accuracy, computation time, and memory requirements as criteria. Although the HBB method was not as computationally efficient as the other methods, it was more robust in finding the optimal solution, particularly for problems with more than three time periods. The HBB method was applied for long-term multiobjective planning to the Sukhothai Groundwater Project in Thailand. The problem was solved using multiobjective analysis based upon a combination of the ε-constraint method and compromise programming.