Hi Wuletawu,

It will depend on the characteristics of the area (upstream and downstream of the dam), the dam and reservoir characteristics and the purpose(s) of operation what kind of model and approach you will use to estimate the effects of different operation strategies. We have some good experiences with the water allocation model WEAP, see the two publications below.

Good luck,

Martijn

Article Adapting Multireservoir Operation to Shifting Patterns of Wa...

Article Quantifying the robustness of optimal reservoir operation fo...

Thank you Martijn for the papers! 

It is true that it depends on the characteristics of the area, the dam, the objective etc. But I find it surprising not to find many literature in the subject.  

wuletawu

There is a good model for this purpose: Hec-ResSim model. Make a google search and you will find article and other information on model aplication. The info will answer your question. I am using this model to find the best operation rules for reservoirs for flood events.

Good luck,

Ana

Maybe you want to model an empirical pattern of the dam operation using machine learning such as artificial neural network (ANN). Machine learning is not process based but quite reasonable to capture the pattern how the dam has been long operated and thus to model the pattern for a predictive purpose.

For instance,

http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9496(2000)126:2(57)

there is quite some optimisation studies done op dam operations, but I also have found little based on day-to-day experience of dam operators. With my own research I have looked closely at the operation practices of the dams on the Zambezi and there I used the Waflex model. This model allows to program yourself the operation rules of the dams which has advantages over the pre-determined software like Ribasim, Weap or HexResSim (but I have also use those models as they are usefull for planning of water allocation studies). See also my publication on: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jawr.12280/abstract