Nile¶

The Nile River is a critical resource in northeastern Africa, serving as a water source for hydropower, agriculture, and domestic use across multiple nations. Water rights issues, particularly between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, have intensified with Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), intended for hydropower generation to boost its economic development.

Originally, the simulation starts at (2025, 1, 1) and the decisions are taken on a monthly basis over a 20-year period, resulting in 240 time steps for each episode. It also has 4 following objectives, we provide reference points for each for hypervolume calculation:

Ethiopia power (max), ref point: 0.0
Sudan deficit (min), ref point: -240
Egypt deficit (min), ref point: -240
HAD minimum level (max), ref point 0.0

Where max/main signifies whether an objective is to be maximised or minimised. The reference point is used for calculating hypervolume as the worst case scenario in terms of acquired rewards by the agent at the end of the simulation.

Where in all cases:

Observation space: Storage in 4 reservoirs, month (5 dimensions)
Action space: Release per each reservoir (4 dimensions)

Here you can see a picture visualising Nile river structure: Alt text

Running Nile¶

import mo_gymnasium
import morl4water.examples

water_management_system = mo_gymnasium.make('nile-v0')

def run():
    #reset
    obs, info = water_management_system.reset()
    print(f'Initial Obs: {obs}')
    final_truncated = False
    final_terminated = False
    for t in range(10):
        if not final_terminated and not final_truncated:
            action = water_management_system.action_space.sample()
            print(f'Action for month: {t}: {action}')

            (
                        final_observation,
                        final_reward,
                        final_terminated,
                        final_truncated,
                        final_info
                    ) = water_management_system.step(action)
            # print(f'Final final_info: ', final_info)
            print(f'Observation: {final_observation}')
            print(f'Reward: {final_reward}')         
        else:
            break
    return final_observation
run()

Taken from: Sari, Y. (2022). Exploring Trade-offs in Reservoir Operations through Many-Objective Optimization: Case of the Nile River Basin (Master’s thesis). Delft University of Technology.

Data & Data Sources¶

Data	Facility	Value	Source
inflow	Catchments in Sudan	Monthly time series	Stochastic data generated by Wheeler et al. (2016)
efficiency	GERD Power Plant	93%	Abdelazim et al. (2020)
head start level	GERD Power Plant	507 m	Eldardiry and Hossain (2021)
max capacity	GERD Power Plant	6000 MW	Wheeler et al. (2016)
max turbine flow	GERD Power Plant	4320 m	Abdelazim et al. (2020)
min turbine flow	GERD Power Plant	0 m	Yasin (2022)
n_turbines	GERD Power Plant	1	Wheeler et al. (2016)
initial storage	GERD reservoir	15BCM	Barnes (2022)
max capacity	GERD reservoir	117.5BCM	Barnes (2022)
max release	GERD reservoir	10000 m³/s	Yasin (2022)
evaporation rate	GERD, Sennar, Roseires and HAD reservoirs	Monthly time series	Wheeler et al. (2016)
efficiency	HAD Power Plant	90%	Yasin (2022)
head start level	HAD Power Plant	147 m	Wheeler et al. (2016)
max capacity	HAD Power Plant	2100 MW	Wheeler et al. (2016)
min turbine flow	HAD Power Plant	0 m	Wheeler et al. (2016)
n_turbines	HAD Power Plant	1	Wheeler et al. (2016)
initial storage	HAD reservoir	137BCM	Yasin (2022)
max capacity	HAD reservoir	182.7BCM	Wheeler et al. (2016)
max release	HAD reservoir	7000 m³/s	Yasin (2022)
max turbine flow	HAD Power Plant	4211 m	Wheeler et al. (2016)
water demand	Irrigation districts	Monthly time series	Yasin (2022), based on population growth and historical data
initial storage	Roseires reservoir	4.57BCM	Yasin (2022)
max capacity	Roseires reservoir	6.1BCM	Wheeler et al. (2016)
max release	Roseires reservoir	15000 m³/s	Yasin (2022)
initial storage	Sennar reservoir	0.43BCM	Yasin (2022)
max capacity	Sennar reservoir	0.6BCM	Wheeler et al. (2016)
max release	Sennar reservoir	7000 m³/s	Yasin (2022)
storage to level to surface relationship	Sennar, GERD, Roseires, HAD reservoirs	Tabular data	Wheeler et al. (2016)
storage to min max release	Sennar, GERD, Roseires, HAD reservoirs	Tabular data	Wheeler et al. (2016)
inflow	White Nile, Atbara, Blue Nile	Monthly time series	Data generated by Yasin (2022) based on historical data gathered by Eldardiry and Hossain (2021)