scholarly journals Identifying Key Hydrological Processes in Highly Urbanized Watersheds for Flood Forecasting with a Distributed Hydrological Model

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huanyu Wang ◽  
Yangbo Chen

The world has experienced large-scale urbanization in the past century, and this trend is ongoing. Urbanization not only causes land use/cover (LUC) changes but also changes the flood responses of watersheds. Lumped conceptual hydrological models cannot be effectively used for flood forecasting in watersheds that lack long time series of hydrological data to calibrate model parameters. Thus, physically based distributed hydrological models are used instead in these areas, but considerable uncertainty is associated with model parameter derivation. To reduce model parameter uncertainty in physically based distributed hydrological models for flood forecasting in highly urbanized watersheds, a procedure is proposed to control parameter uncertainty. The core concept of this procedure is to identify the key hydrological and flood processes in the highly urbanized watersheds and the sensitive model parameters related to these processes. Then, the sensitive model parameters are adjusted based on local runoff coefficients to reduce the parameter uncertainty. This procedure includes these steps: collecting the latest LUC information or estimating this information using satellite remote sensing images, analyzing LUC spatial patterns and identifying dominant LUC types and their spatial structures, choosing and establishing a distributed hydrological model as the forecasting tool, and determining the initial model parameters and identifying the key hydrological processes and sensitive model parameters based on a parameter sensitivity analysis. A highly urbanized watershed called Shahe Creek in the Pearl River Delta area was selected as a case study. This study finds that the runoff production processes associated with both the ferric luvisol and acric ferralsol soil types and the runoff routing process on urban land are key hydrological processes. Additionally, the soil water content under saturated conditions, the soil water content under field conditions and the roughness of urban land are sensitive parameters.

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 375-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Chen ◽  
J. Li ◽  
H. Xu

Abstract. Physically based distributed hydrological models (hereafter referred to as PBDHMs) divide the terrain of the whole catchment into a number of grid cells at fine resolution and assimilate different terrain data and precipitation to different cells. They are regarded to have the potential to improve the catchment hydrological process simulation and prediction capability. In the early stage, physically based distributed hydrological models are assumed to derive model parameters from the terrain properties directly, so there is no need to calibrate model parameters. However, unfortunately the uncertainties associated with this model derivation are very high, which impacted their application in flood forecasting, so parameter optimization may also be necessary. There are two main purposes for this study: the first is to propose a parameter optimization method for physically based distributed hydrological models in catchment flood forecasting by using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and to test its competence and to improve its performances; the second is to explore the possibility of improving physically based distributed hydrological model capability in catchment flood forecasting by parameter optimization. In this paper, based on the scalar concept, a general framework for parameter optimization of the PBDHMs for catchment flood forecasting is first proposed that could be used for all PBDHMs. Then, with the Liuxihe model as the study model, which is a physically based distributed hydrological model proposed for catchment flood forecasting, the improved PSO algorithm is developed for the parameter optimization of the Liuxihe model in catchment flood forecasting. The improvements include adoption of the linearly decreasing inertia weight strategy to change the inertia weight and the arccosine function strategy to adjust the acceleration coefficients. This method has been tested in two catchments in southern China with different sizes, and the results show that the improved PSO algorithm could be used for the Liuxihe model parameter optimization effectively and could improve the model capability largely in catchment flood forecasting, thus proving that parameter optimization is necessary to improve the flood forecasting capability of physically based distributed hydrological models. It also has been found that the appropriate particle number and the maximum evolution number of PSO algorithm used for the Liuxihe model catchment flood forecasting are 20 and 30 respectively.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 10603-10649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Chen ◽  
J. Li ◽  
H. Xu

Abstract. Physically based distributed hydrological models discrete the terrain of the whole catchment into a number of grid cells at fine resolution, and assimilate different terrain data and precipitation to different cells, and are regarded to have the potential to improve the catchment hydrological processes simulation and prediction capability. In the early stage, physically based distributed hydrological models are assumed to derive model parameters from the terrain properties directly, so there is no need to calibrate model parameters, but unfortunately, the uncertanties associated with this model parameter deriving is very high, which impacted their application in flood forecasting, so parameter optimization may also be necessary. There are two main purposes for this study, the first is to propose a parameter optimization method for physically based distributed hydrological models in catchment flood forecasting by using PSO algorithm and to test its competence and to improve its performances, the second is to explore the possibility of improving physically based distributed hydrological models capability in cathcment flood forecasting by parameter optimization. In this paper, based on the scalar concept, a general framework for parameter optimization of the PBDHMs for catchment flood forecasting is first proposed that could be used for all PBDHMs. Then, with Liuxihe model as the study model, which is a physically based distributed hydrological model proposed for catchment flood forecasting, the improverd Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is developed for the parameter optimization of Liuxihe model in catchment flood forecasting, the improvements include to adopt the linear decreasing inertia weight strategy to change the inertia weight, and the arccosine function strategy to adjust the acceleration coefficients. This method has been tested in two catchments in southern China with different sizes, and the results show that the improved PSO algorithm could be used for Liuxihe model parameter optimization effectively, and could improve the model capability largely in catchment flood forecasting, thus proven that parameter optimization is necessary to improve the flood forecasting capability of physically based distributed hydrological model. It also has been found that the appropriate particle number and the maximum evolution number of PSO algorithm used for Liuxihe model catchment flood forcasting is 20 and 30, respectively.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 903-920 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Qi ◽  
C. Zhang ◽  
G. Fu ◽  
C. Sweetapple ◽  
H. Zhou

Abstract. The applicability of six fine-resolution precipitation products, including precipitation radar, infrared, microwave and gauge-based products, using different precipitation computation recipes, is evaluated using statistical and hydrological methods in northeastern China. In addition, a framework quantifying uncertainty contributions of precipitation products, hydrological models, and their interactions to uncertainties in ensemble discharges is proposed. The investigated precipitation products are Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products (TRMM3B42 and TRMM3B42RT), Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS)/Noah, Asian Precipitation – Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE), Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN), and a Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMAP-MVK+) product. Two hydrological models of different complexities, i.e. a water and energy budget-based distributed hydrological model and a physically based semi-distributed hydrological model, are employed to investigate the influence of hydrological models on simulated discharges. Results show APHRODITE has high accuracy at a monthly scale compared with other products, and GSMAP-MVK+ shows huge advantage and is better than TRMM3B42 in relative bias (RB), Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (NSE), root mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (CC), false alarm ratio, and critical success index. These findings could be very useful for validation, refinement, and future development of satellite-based products (e.g. NASA Global Precipitation Measurement). Although large uncertainty exists in heavy precipitation, hydrological models contribute most of the uncertainty in extreme discharges. Interactions between precipitation products and hydrological models can have the similar magnitude of contribution to discharge uncertainty as the hydrological models. A better precipitation product does not guarantee a better discharge simulation because of interactions. It is also found that a good discharge simulation depends on a good coalition of a hydrological model and a precipitation product, suggesting that, although the satellite-based precipitation products are not as accurate as the gauge-based products, they could have better performance in discharge simulations when appropriately combined with hydrological models. This information is revealed for the first time and very beneficial for precipitation product applications.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji Li ◽  
Yangbo Chen ◽  
Huanyu Wang ◽  
Jianming Qin ◽  
Jie Li

Abstract. Long lead time flood forecasting is very important for large watershed flood mitigation as it provides more time for flood warning and emergency responses. Latest numerical weather forecast model could provide 1–15 days quantitative precipitation forecasting products at grid format, by coupling this product with distributed hydrological model could produce long lead time watershed flood forecasting products. This paper studied the feasibility of coupling the Liuxihe Model with the WRF QPF for a large watershed flood forecasting in southern China. The QPF of WRF products has three lead time, including 24 hour, 48 hour and 72 hour, the grid resolution is 20 km × 20 km. The Liuxihe Model is set up with freely downloaded terrain property, the model parameters were previously optimized with rain gauge observed precipitation, and re-optimized with WRF QPF. Results show that the WRF QPF has bias with the rain gauge precipitation, and a post-processing method is proposed to post process the WRF QPF products, which improves the flood forecasting capability. With model parameter re-optimization, the model's performance improves also, it suggests that the model parameters be optimized with QPF, not the rain gauge precipitation. With the increasing of lead time, the accuracy of WRF QPF decreases, so does the flood forecasting capability. Flood forecasting products produced by coupling Liuxihe Model with WRF QPF provides good reference for large watershed flood warning due to its long lead time and rational results.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mun-Ju Shin ◽  
Yun Choi

The hydrological model assessment and development (hydromad) modeling package is an R-based package that can be applied to simulate hydrological models and optimize parameters. As the hydromad package is incompatible with hydrological models outside the package, the parameters of such models cannot be directly optimized. Hence, we proposed a method of optimizing the hydrological-model parameters by combining the executable (EXE) file of the hydrological model with the shuffled complex evolution (SCE) algorithm provided by the hydromad package. A physically based, spatially distributed, grid-based rainfall–runoff model (GRM) was employed. By calibrating the parameters of the GRM, the performance of the model was found to be reasonable. Thus, the hydromad can be used to optimize the hydrological-model parameters outside the package if the EXE file of the hydrological model is available. The time required to optimize the parameters depends on the type of event, even for the same catchment area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji Li ◽  
Daoxian Yuan ◽  
Fuxi Zhang ◽  
Yongjun Jiang ◽  
Jiao Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract. Karst trough valleys are prone to flooding, primarily because of the unique hydrogeological features of karst landform, which are conducive to the spread of rapid runoff. Hydrological models that represent the complicated hydrological processes in karst regions are effective for predicting karst flooding, but their application has been hampered by their complex model structures and associated parameter set, especially so for distributed hydrological models, which require large amounts of hydrogeological data. Distributed hydrological models for predicting the Karst flooding is highly dependent on distributed structrues modeling, complicated boundary parameters setting, and tremendous hydrogeological data processing that is both time and computational power consuming. Proposed here is a distributed physically-based karst hydrological model, known as the QMG (Qingmuguan) model. The structural design of this model is relatively simple, and it is generally divided into surface and underground double-layered structures. The parameters that represent the structural functions of each layer have clear physical meanings, and the parameters are less than those of the current distributed models. This allows modeling in karst areas with only a small amount of necessary hydrogeological data. 18 flood processes across the karst underground river in the Qingmuguan karst trough valley are simulated by the QMG model, and the simulated values agree well with observations, for which the average value of Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient was 0.92. A sensitivity analysis shows that the infiltration coefficient, permeability coefficient, and rock porosity are the parameters that require the most attention in model calibration and optimization. The improved predictability of karst flooding by the proposed QMG model promotes a better mechanistic depicting of runoff generation and confluence in karst trough valleys.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ammara Nusrat ◽  
Hamza Farooq Gabriel ◽  
Sajjad Haider ◽  
Muhammad Shahid

<p> Increase in frequency of the floods is one of the noticeable climate change impacts. The efficient and optimized flood analysis system needs to be used for the reliable flood forecasting. The credibility and the reliability of the flood forecasting system is depending upon the framework used for its parameter optimization. Comprehensive framework has been presented to optimize the input parameters of the computationally extensive distributed hydrological model. A large river basin has the high spatio-temporal heterogeneity of aquifer and surface properties.  Estimating the parameters in fully distributed hydrological model is a challenging task. The parameter optimization becomes computationally more demanding when the model input parameters (30 to 100 even greater) have multi-dimensional parameter space, many output parameters which make the optimization problem multi-objective and large number of model simulations requirement for the optimization. Aforementioned challenges are met by introducing the methodology to optimize the input parameters of fully distributed hydrological model, following steps are included (1) screening of the parameters through Morris sensitivity analysis method in different flow periods, so that optimization would be performed for sensitive parameters, different scalar output functions are used in this regard (2) to emulate the hydrologic response of the dynamic model, surrogate models or meta-models are used (3) sampling of parameters values using the optimized ranges obtained from the meta-models; the results are evident that the parameter optimization using the proposed framework is efficient can be effectively performed.  The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework has been demonstrated through the accurate calibration of the model with fewer model runs. This study also demonstrates the importance and use of scalar functions in calculating sensitivity indices, when the model output is temporally variable. In addition, the parameter optimization using the proposed framework is efficient and present study can be used as reference for optimization of distributed hydrological model. </p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Calibration, parameter ranking, Sensitivity analysis, Hydrological modeling, optimization</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 2211-2224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Seibert ◽  
Marc J. P. Vis ◽  
Irene Kohn ◽  
Markus Weiler ◽  
Kerstin Stahl

Abstract. Glaciers play an important role in high-mountain hydrology. While changing glacier areas are considered of highest importance for the understanding of future changes in runoff, glaciers are often only poorly represented in hydrological models. Most importantly, the direct coupling between the simulated glacier mass balances and changing glacier areas needs feasible solutions. The use of a complex glacier model is often not possible due to data and computational limitations. The Δh parameterization is a simple approach to consider the spatial variation of glacier thickness and area changes. Here, we describe a conceptual implementation of the Δh parameterization in the semi-distributed hydrological model HBV-light, which also allows for the representation of glacier advance phases and for comparison between the different versions of the implementation. The coupled glacio-hydrological simulation approach, which could also be implemented in many other semi-distributed hydrological models, is illustrated based on an example application.


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