GERMANY

The research site in Germany is the Wupper River basin, which has a catchment area of about 800 km². The basin combines 15 reservoirs, providing drinking and raw water for one million inhabitants, water for hydropower generation, water for minimum and maximum flow regulations to mitigate floods and droughts, and for recreational use. Heavy floods have been recorded in 1890, 1909, 1925, and 1946, resulting in enormous damage.

A key issue at this site is to manage the 15 reservoirs in order to balance raw water production, flood protection, drinking water production, and hydro-power generation as well as minimum and maximum (environmental) flows. Climate change impact studies show a broad range of possible future scenarios. But generally, for the Wupper basin, higher discharge in winter months and lower discharge in summer months seems the most likely.

Further, an increase of intensity and number of storm rainfall events is expected. This leads to a variety of effects, e.g. higher amplitudes and higher number of occurrences of extreme discharges, which will be investigated in BINGO. Local variations in rainfall patterns as well as effects of wet vs. dry winters are also expected to complicate future water management in the Wupper River basin. Also, longer periods of low flows coupled with local storm rainfall events and an increase in hot summer periods could result in water stress and flash floods.

BINGO Impact:

BINGO will help to balance these pressures and the water quantity and quality of the Wupper water system by designing state-of-the-art river and reservoir algorithms.

BINGO Partners from Germany:

IWW, InterSus, FUB, Wupperverband. Meet our Partners here.

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