Linking Drought Monitoring Systems to Management Actions

The aim of this study is to link drought monitoring systems to management actions in surface water systems. For this purpose drought early warning system is applied. In order to assess the proposed approach, water resources system of Zarine-rud River and Reservoir was used. Management actions includes utilizing coefficients that decrease the release from the reservoir. In each drought warning level, a reduction coefficient is computed by a Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm. Utilizing the model during the entire historic period, the number of alerts is decreased on levels two to four by 18, 80, and 10%, respectively. Also, by applying reduction coefficients during index drought period, deficits above 80% decreased to less than 50% over six months. The effect of model in condition of supplying the environment water right of Urmia Lake is also evaluated. Applying reduction coefficients during index drought, the deficits above 50% is decreased to less than 30% over 14 months. This research showed that model had an appropriate function in warning declaration in long term periods. The assessments indicated the achieved results from the model are accurate and acceptable and therefore the application of this method is recommended