Determinação de níveis de alerta para operação de reservatórios isolados no semiárido: o caso do Açude Epitácio Pessoa.

Abstract

Reservoirs built in regions with a typically semi-arid climate and low average annual rainfall are susceptible to rapid and damaging interannual variability in their volume, which directly influences the quantity and quality of water available to the population supplied by it. For this reason that the present work aimed to analyze different operating scenarios, through alert levels, which are parameters for controlling the volume of the reservoir and demand coefficients, which reduce the outflow for each alert level reached. The reservoir under study is the Açude Epitácio Pessoa (Boqueirão), located in Paraíba and due to the variability of its annual recharge, the reservoir demands for efficient operation measures. Induced by the characteristics of the region, such as climate, rainfall and evaporation losses, in addition to information from water agencies, five operating policies have been proposed. Through simulation approaches with historical series of precipitation and water balance, numerical results of these simulations were obtained, being analyzed by performance criteria. The results indicate that scenarios of greater reliability are not always ideal, and may present less resilience and greater vulnerability, which implies that there is no ideal policy, and that any decision making by the reservoir managers must be supported by more factors than only numerical indicators.