Managing Reservoir Discharge through Accurate Flow Measurement

Reservoirs store water for many important purposes in today's world, including culinary, irrigation, recreation, and flood control. In order to ensure that this valuable resource is wisely utilized, the discharge from reservoirs must be managed through accurate flow measurement. Unfortunately many reservoirs do not have measurement structures that allow flows to be monitored or accurately managed. It is not uncommon to have reservoir discharge set by historical arbitrary methods, such as opening a valve a certain number of turns on a certain day or keeping downstream river banks or channels at a certain elevation. While historical methods are better than nothing, consistent releases in these cases usually depend on constant reservoir head or stable stream beds.