New opportunities for distributed hydrological modelling for forecasting are emerging from new sources of high resolution spatially distributed data such as weather radar, satellite platforms, and high resolution meteorological models. Both the DMIP study initiated by the US NWS and FLOODRELIEF funded by the EU aim to address science questions related to these new opportunities such as what is the nature and impact of spatial variability of basin physical characteristics and forcings ? What role does uncertainty play in achieving benefits from distributed models and what level of model complexity is required ?
DMIP:
Organised by the US National Weather Service, Hydrology Laboratory, the main objectives of the DMIP project are
- To identify and help develop models and modelling systems that best utilise NEXRAD and other spatial data sets to improve RFC-scale river simulations
- To help guide NWS/HL’s distributed hydrologic modelling research, science, and applications.
The participating institutions project included the co-ordinating partner of the FLOODRELIEF project DHI Water & Environment , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, Hydrologic Research Center, NWS/NCEP Environmental Modeling Center and NASA-GSFC, Hydrology Laboratory, NWS, Utah State University and and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand, USDA ARS and Blackland Research Center, University of California at Berkeley, The Hydraulic and Electrical College of Wuhan University, University of Oklahoma, University of Waterloo.
The results of the DMIP project are now published as a special issue of the Journal of Hydrology Volume 298, Issues 1-4, Pages 1-335 (1 October 2004) The Distributed Model Intercomparison Project (DMIP).
FLOODRELIEF Contributions:
- Submission of simulations using the operational river and catchment modelling system MIKE 11 for the Blue River catchment. The Blue River catchment is particularly interesting in terms of distributed modelling for several reasons. Firstly important variability in the rainfall is observed and distributed rainfall is available via the NEXRAD radar-based rainfall product. Furthermore from the long narrow shape of the basin and the observed variability in the soil properties, it is expected that both distributed rainfall-runoff modelling and distributed routing are relevant.
- An evaluation of the impact of model structure on hydrological modelling uncertainty. In particular a new general modelling framework developed within the FLOODRELIEF project was applied to a systematic investigation of different model structures. Using this new tool conceptual and physically-based process descriptions were compared and the performance of different methods of treating spatial variability and different levels of model complexity were evaluated.
- An investigation of the multimodel ensembles using the FLOODRELIEF modelling framework.
For further information
- DMIP
- FLOODRELIEF
- Relevant Publications
DMIP Participants and Lead Investigators
- MIT (Dr. Raphael Bras)
- University of Arizona (Dr. Hoshin Gupta)
- Hydrologic Research Center (Dr. Konstantine Georgakakos)
- NWS/NCEP Environmental Modeling Center (Dr. Dag Lohmann, Dr. Ken Mitchell) and NASA-GSFC (Dr. Christa Peters-Lidard)
- Hydrology Laboratory, NWS (Dr Michael Smith)
- Utah State University (Dr. David Tarboton) and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand (Dr. Ross Woods)
- USDA ARS (Dr. Jeff Arnold) and TAES Blackland Research Center (Dr. Mauro Di Luzio)
- University of California at Berkeley (Dr. Xu Liang)
- The Hydraulic and Electrical College of WuHan University, China (Dr. Li Lan)
- University of Waterloo, Ontario (Dr. Allyson Bingeman)
- DHI Water & Environment (Dr. Michael Butts)
- University of Oklahoma (Dr. Baxter Vieux)