MODELLING THE WATER LEVEL OF THE VEA DAM

Abstract

Water, a basic need of life is an indispensible resource which affects all aspects of a community's well-being. Hence the need to forecast the change in the water level of dams and also to manage the quantity of water in the dams or reservoirs for effective planning and distribution to meet the growing demands cannot be over emphasized. This work therefore sought to model the water level of the Yea dam or reservoir using the Box-Jenkins approach or method, by identifying the best model from an estimated ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) candidate models based on a selection criteria. From the results of the study, the change in the water level of the Yea dam or reservoir for the period under consideration, was modeled with ARIMA (1, 0, 1) x (1, 1, 1)12model. The model was found to be adequate for forecasting since it passed diagnostics test and evaluation and was validated as well. The forecast of the study showed an increase in the pattern of the water level, with the maximum or highest water level occurring between September and December.