Aiming at the problem of solving the minimum water shortage in the reservoir dispatching configuration, the social sentiment optimization algorithm (SEOA algorithm) was adopted, and the initial population and the convergence speed of the algorithm were improved, and the new algorithm was applied to the Dongyulin Reservoir. The results showed that the improved SEOA algorithm has the advantages of high efficiency, low computational complexity and strong searching ability in the problem of minimum water shortage in reservoir scheduling, which has practical values.