Drainage control in water management of polders in the Netherlands

One of the impacts drainage has on the downstream part of a water system is a higher risk of peak flows caused by heavy precipitation. In the polders of the Netherlands this is a well-known problem. The heavy precipitation flows easily from paved areas and with some delay from unpaved areas into many small canals and through these canals towards the downstream pump station. Here, high water levels can result in an unacceptable high groundwater table. This problem has grown over the past years as more area has been paved and storm events have become more extreme. Until recently in the Netherlands, the solution for this problem was to increase the pump capacity, but nowadays the Dutch Government's opinion and that of the local Water Boards about solving this problem is changing. Rather than shifting the problem to more downstream lying parts of the water system, the philosophy has become “first retain, then store, only then discharge” (Nationaal Bestuursakkoord Water, 2003. Dutch National Policy on Water Management for the 21st Century). A way to retain water in upstream parts of the waters system is to use real-time control structures in the upstream canals. In this paper a control method is presented that can effectively retain water in the upstream parts, until the downstream part can accommodate this amount of water. The method is based on upstream Proportional Integral-control with adaptation of the set point. The control is referred to as Cascade PI-Control. Basically, the goal of the control method is to fill the available storage equally in the whole area. Tests have been performed with a calibrated model of an existing polder in the Netherlands. Results show that application of the control method is sufficient to avoid such drainage problems.