Bastola, Satish and Murphy, Conor (2013) Sensitivity of the performance of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model to the temporal sampling of calibration data. Hydrology Research, 44 (3). pp. 484-494. ISSN 0029-1277

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Abstract

The effect of the time step of calibration data on the performance of a hydrological model is examined through a numerical experiment where HYMOD, a rainfall–runoff model, is calibrated with data of varying temporal resolution. A simple scaling relationship between the parameters of the model and modelling time step is derived which enables information from daily hydrological records to be used in modelling at time steps much shorter than daily. Model parameters were found to respond differently depending upon the degree of aggregation of calibration data. A loss in performance, especially in terms of the Nash–Sutcliffe measure, is evident when behavioural simulators derived with one modelling time step are used for simulation at another time step. The loss in performance is greater when parameters derived from a longer time step were used for simulating flow with a shorter time step. The application of a simple scaling relationship derived from a multi-time step model calibration significantly decreased the loss in model performance. Such an approach may offer the prospect of conducting higher temporal resolution flood frequency analysis when finer scale data for model calibration are not available or limited.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	multi-objective calibration; rainfall–runoff model; temporal aggregation;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	12207
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.2166/nh.2012.061
Depositing User:	Conor Murphy
Date Deposited:	22 Jan 2020 16:08
Journal or Publication Title:	Hydrology Research
Publisher:	IWA Publishing
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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