Project Description

This project was carried out by UPC-IRI for WL|DELFT HYDRAULICS and fits within the framework of the global project "Ruimte voor Rijntakken (RVR)" (Space for Rhine branches) financed by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management.

To avoid future floodings, the branches of the river Rhine have to be able to discharge much more water. In the RVR project, the Ministry and the authorities involved investigate how the Rhine branches can be adapated with minimal dike reinforcements.

The RiverBank project consists of a trial implementation, based on Constraint Logic Programming, of a tool to solve the redesign of the banks of the river Rhine. The problem is a non-linear Constrained Optimisation problem where water levels along the river have to be minimised while respecting constraints of flow, impulse and a lot of local constraints on the following two contradictory design interventions:

• Excavate the river bed, increasing the discharge capacity and lowering water levels
  
• Increase Nature Development, decreasing discharge capacity and increasing water levels
  

The trial project resulted very successful. A tool was implemented in CHIP++ v5. It makes use of Finite-Domain, Rational and Interval constraint solvers. The 1-D design/optimisation problem of the Rhine branch Waal can be solved in a few minutes, where previous implementations based on Genetic Algorithms needed a day or two to come up with an equivalent solution.

For more information see the project web page.