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Advances in real-time flood forecasting.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>15/07/2002
<mark>Journal</mark>Philosophical Transactions A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Issue number1796
Volume360
Number of pages18
Pages (from-to)1433-1450
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This paper discusses the modelling of rainfall-flow (rainfall-run-off) and flow-routeing processes in river systems within the context of real-time flood forecasting. It is argued that deterministic, reductionist (or 'bottom-up') models are inappropriate for real-time forecasting because of the inherent uncertainty that characterizes river-catchment dynamics and the problems of model over-parametrization. The advantages of alternative, efficiently parametrized data-based mechanistic models, identified and estimated using statistical methods, are discussed. It is shown that such models are in an ideal form for incorporation in a real-time, adaptive forecasting system based on recursive state-space estimation (an adaptive version of the stochastic Kalman filter algorithm). An illustrative example, based on the analysis of a limited set of hourly rainfall-flow data from the River Hodder in northwest England, demonstrates the utility of this methodology in difficult circumstances and illustrates the advantages of incorporating real-time state and parameter adaption.