We are pleased to share a new publication resulting from a collaboration between our lab and colleagues from Cornell University and University of California Davis.

In this study, we develop a novel framework to support adaptive reservoir operations under climate change, addressing a key challenge in water resources management: when and how to update operating policies as conditions evolve.

The proposed approach combines two decision layers:

• an outer adaptation policy that identifies thresholds in key indicators (e.g., demand, flood risk, and hydrological conditions) to trigger action
• an inner control policy that is dynamically reoptimized based on recent observations

Applied to the Oroville Reservoir (California), the framework shows that adaptive strategies can match or outperform historical operations while remaining robust across a wide range of uncertain future scenarios.

The analysis also highlights the critical role of demand, flood cost, and mean annual flow in triggering adaptation decisions, providing insights into how monitoring systems can better support real-world water management.

The paper is available here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025WR040531

The data, simulation code, and figure scripts are available here https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16755198