Deriving unit cost coefficients for linear programming-driven priority-based simulations

Throughout the United States, water resources projects are experiencing reduced ability to fulfill demands. Increases in water demands have intensified competition over water allocation and operations. Water resources system models are often used to analyze trade-offs, facilitate better decision-making, and resolve conflict. Most newer water supply simulation models employ optimization methods to allocate water and operations according to fixed operational priorities for each time-step, simulating the efforts of capable system operators attempting to achieve a given set of operational priorities. For extensive complex networks with return flows, loops arising from pumping, and proportional delivery reductions for equal-priority deliveries, the assignment of unit weights in the objective function can be a matter of some art and controversy.;This dissertation presents a generalized method for automating the computation of unit weights that guarantees priority-preserving behavior for network flow programming-based simulation models and a step-by-step procedure to generate priority preserving weights for linear programming driven simulations models. Many test case examples are presented, including a LP driven model California's Central Valley. The examples illustrate various network configurations and how priority preserving weights are computed and used to allocate water by priority. An analysis of the LP driven simulation problem itself is presented to validate the use of the proposed procedure for LP driven simulations.