Developing Operating Policies to Achieve Kissimmee Environmental Restoration

This paper will detail the development of the OASIS Okeechobee Chain of Lakes Model (OKCOL) for the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). OKCOL will replace the existing Upper Kissimee (UKISS) model developed in the 1990's. OKCOL uses OASIS' mixed integer linear programming (MILP) engine and automatic non-convex segmentation capability to model hydraulic constraints effectively and efficiently. Those constraints include hydraulicly determined bi-directional flow in free flowing channels. As a result of using the iterative capability built into MILP, OKCOL produces a substantially closer agreement between the modeled flows and the underlying hydraulic equations than does UKISS, which had custom iterative code for simulating the hydraulic constraints. OKCOL is being expanded to include the Lower Kissimee Basin and to screen alternatives for basin-wide operating policy alternatives. The scope and intermediate results of this work will also be described.