Title: Operationalizing the Rainwater Harvesting Systems: Optimization and Advanced Rule-Based Control

PhD Completion Seminar
Speaker: Yi Zhen
University of Melbourne

Summary:
Increased population growth and urbanization have brought critical challenges to urban water systems, including water scarcity and environmental degradation. To address the problems, real-time controlled rainwater storages are now being used to reduce flooding by intercepting rainfall, while also providing an alternate water supply and actively restoring baseflow to improve biodiversity outcomes. These benefits can be enhanced when the storages are operated collaboratively, and we develop an optimization-based strategy to control the entire network of distributed small- and large-scale real-time controlled rainwater storages. While the optimization achieves great success, its practical implementation can be challenging due to its complexity, integration difficulties, and the potentially high licensing costs of commercial solvers. Therefore, we propose an advanced rule-based control approach, informed by insights from the optimization model, as a flexible and cost-effective alternative that remains competitive in performance. In this seminar, we will discuss both optimization-based and rule-based strategies for controlling rainwater harvesting systems. We will demonstrate how optimization techniques are utilized to enhance system performance, and how we improve basic the rule-based control by incorporating insights gained from the optimization models.

Bio: 
Yi is undertaking a PhD at the University of Melbourne, with a focus on operations research and multi-objective optimization. Her research involves applying optimization and machine learning techniques to address challenges in urban water systems. She is supervised by Prof. Kate Smith-Miles, Prof. Tim Fletcher, Dr. Matthew Burns and Dr. Rhys Coleman.

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This event is Hybrid:
ATTEND IN PERSON – MELBOURNE CONNECT, LEVEL 8, ROOM 8109, 700 SWANSTON STREET, CARLTON
ZOOM – MEETING ID: 873 1557 5255; PASSWORD: 778635

SEMINAR: WED 18 JUNE 2025 16:00-17:00 (AEST, Melbourne Time)