Spinelli et al. (2026) Learning What Information Matters and When: Concurrent Input Selection and Policy Optimization in Multipurpose Reservoir Operations

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Water Resources Research
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-06-28
• Authors: Davide Spinelli, Marta Zaniolo, Matteo Giuliani, Andrea Francesco Castelletti
• DOI: 10.1029/2025wr042670

Research Groups

• Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bologna
• Institute for Hydrological Research, National Research Council (CNR)

Short Summary

This study introduces a unified framework that learns optimal reservoir operating policies while identifying the most valuable information to inform them, demonstrating improved performance over state-of-the-art methods.

Objective

• Develop a novel framework for concurrent input and policy optimization in Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Lake Como, a regulated lake in Northern Italy
• Temporal Scale: Annual cycle

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Neuro-evolutionary multi-objective optimization extended with Time-Varying Sensitivity Analysis (TVSA)
• Data sources: Real-world forecasts from various variables and lead times

Main Results

• The framework automatically discovers policies with performance matching or surpassing state-of-the-art methods that rely on expert-selected inputs.
• TVSA reveals adaptive shifts in reliance on different forecast horizons throughout the annual cycle.

Contributions

• Introduce a generalizable framework for discovering what information matters and when in Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations, offering improved performance over existing methods.

Funding

• This research was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. [insert grant number])

Citation

@article{Spinelli2026Learning,
  author = {Spinelli, Davide and Zaniolo, Marta and Giuliani, Matteo and Castelletti, Andrea Francesco},
  title = {Learning What Information Matters and When: Concurrent Input Selection and Policy Optimization in Multipurpose Reservoir Operations},
  journal = {Water Resources Research},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1029/2025wr042670},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025wr042670}
}