Table of contentsIntroductionProblem definitionObjective and research questionIntroductionFloods are one of the main and most frequent natural disasters in the world (Jiang et al., 2006). As revealed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO, 2014), storms and floods accounted for 79 percent of the total number of disasters between 1970 and 2012, causing 54 percent of deaths and 84 percent of economic losses. Many researchers have noted (IPCC, 2014; Saghafian et al., 2010; Jiang et al., 2006; Li, 2011) that floods have been increasingly frequent and show a trend towards greater damage over the years. recent decades. Global issues, such as climate change, population growth and deterioration of ecosystem services, may further contribute to higher flood risk (WMO, 2018). China is abundant in water resources, with considerable rivers with a total length of 42,000 km. Meanwhile, China is also one of the worst flood-affected countries in the world, both in terms of death toll and economic losses. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The map (Figure 1) provided by WMO (2014) shows that China lost more than $100 billion to disasters during the period from 1970 to 2012, which is mainly due to floods . With the increasing impact of human intervention and climate change, the diversity of flood risks, such as higher risk of dam failure, are defined as new flood risk characteristics (Wan and Wang , 2011). Its length is 1,000 km and the basin area is 270,000 km2 with 170 million people and 12 million hectares of cultivated land in total, ranking it third among all Chinese basins. The annual runoff and precipitation in the Huai River are recorded at 62.2 billion m3 (Gebeyehu et al., 2018) and 875 mm, respectively. Precipitation also has an uneven distribution which is concentrated between July and September (70%) and decreases from the south (1400 to 1600 mm) to the north (600 to 700 mm) (Qian et al., 2017). Due to these characteristics, the Huai River constantly suffers from flooding. For example, between 1994 and 2007, floods occurred ten times (Gebeyehu et al., 2018). Additionally, Jun et al. (2012) found that the water resources of the Huai River are rather sensitive to climate change. Therefore, the water management of Huai River faces not only problems in the current situation, but also future challenges. Problem Definition As mentioned above, many natural disasters, especially floods, often occur in the Huai River basin. To deal with flood and drought problems, the Chinese government has built a large number of water projects along the Huai River, such as floodgates and dams, as well as projects with non-structural measures. Among the structural measures, the operation of storage areas can effectively mitigate flooding situations by storing floodwaters within them to protect important towns downstream. However, the interests of residents living in the storage areas would then be harmed, as they use these areas for housing and agricultural activities. Apparently, protecting downstream areas/cities and minimizing flooding in storage areas are two conflicting goals. There is therefore a need?