Economic performance of reservoirs a sensitivity analysis. April 1978.

Investigation of the precision with which it is necessary to estimate various parameters of a single reservoir water resource system to achieve any specified accuracy in estimating the returns and the possible variability of economic returns which could result from the operation of such a system, as well as developing procedures for determining the optimum level of development of the use of the water supplied by the system to maximise the mean of the present worth of the return. Instead of concentrating on the asymtopic or long-run behaviour of reservoirs, this study expresses its results in terms of transient behaviour. Among the results, for each system there is an optimum demand which maximisis the mean of the present worth of the return from the system, and which is not greatly affected by the life of the system, the discount rate or the capacity of the reservoir, but mainly affected by the mean, the standard deviation and the coefficient of skewness of the inflow into the system