Decentralized control of inland navigation networks with distributaries: Application to navigation canals in the north of France

Inland navigation networks are large-scale systems with large dead times, nonlinearities and variable time delays. They are composed of interconnected reaches. The management goal is to maintain the water level of each reach around a certain value. In this paper, a decentralized control approach is addressed to fulfill this objective. It is based on IDZ models by considering connected reaches with distributaries. A real navigation sub-network in the north of France serves as the case study for this work.