Development of Optimal Design of Flood Control Systems Model Considering Detention Dams Using Genetic Algorithm

Flood conducting and controlling systems are very huge and the construction and operation of these
systems are very expensive. Any reduction in the construction cost of these system will lead to a major
saving. This paper addresses the problem of optimal design of flood controlling systems using
detention dams and proposes a methodology for the optimal design of these systems using
evolutionary algorithms. The method uses Genetic Algorithm (GA) as a search engine and the
Transport Module of the SWMM as the simulator. The simulator is able to analyze the unsteady flow
in open channels and the basin of the dam. It is shown that interfacing GA as the optimizer and
SWMM as the simulator leads to an efficient optimization tool for the optimal design of flood
controlling systems. The effectiveness and efficiency of the model is tested against a simple analytical
problem The applicability of the model for large scale real world problems is verified by solving the
flood controlling system of South Pars Project and the results are compared with those proposed by the
Consulting Engineers. The results show that proposed optimization model can considerably (about
23%) reduce the total costs of flood controlling systems.