Logical structure and implementation mechanisms of closed-loop scheduling for China's national water network

The effective use of modern water-network system capabilities requires guidance from specific task scenarios, and national water-network scheduling is the key operational mechanism for organizing these capabilities. It converts scheduling needs arising in task scenarios into scheduling tasks and organizes coordinated actions across regions, governance levels, responsible entities, and engineering projects. It also links execution status, task outcomes, and deviation-handling records to the scheduling objects, objectives, constraint boundaries, and approval basis established when the task was initiated, and feeds this information back to the relevant statutory scheduling authorities for outcome verification, deviation correction, and subsequent judgment, thereby forming a scheduling closed loop. At present, inconsistent object definitions, unclear authority and responsibility boundaries, unreliable instruction transmission, and discontinuous records across the scheduling process prevent stable linkages among scheduling tasks, coordinated actions, and task outcomes. To address this problem, this study defines closed-loop scheduling for the national water network, proposes a core logic comprising five criteria and four forms of end-to-end linkage, and develops an eight-node operational chain. It further proposes three implementation mechanisms: coordination between the statutory-authority track and the intelligent-support track, transition between preventive and execution states, and “4+1” cross-level and cross-system coordination. These mechanisms respectively link technical support with decision-making by statutory scheduling authorities, standardize transitions between the preventive and execution states of a scheduling task, and ensure cross-level task handoff and continuity of responsibility. Rule, instruction, and evidence chains, together with institutional safeguards, support stable closed-loop operation. The study provides a theoretical basis for developing the national water-network scheduling system and improving its operational mechanisms.