Abstract
We calibrate a storm-event distributed hydrologic model to a watershed, in which runoff is significantly affected by reservoir storage and release, using a multi-objective genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). This paper addresses the following questions: What forms of the objective (fitness) function used in the optimization model will result in a better calibration? How does the error in reservoir release caused by neglected human interference or the imprecise storage-release function affect the calibration? Reservoir release is studied as a specific (and popular) form of human interference. Two procedures for handling reservoir releases are tested and compared: (1) treating reservoir releases to be solely determined by the hydraulic structure (predefined storage or stage-discharge relations) as if perfect, a procedure usually adopted in watershed model calibration; or (2) adding reservoir releases that are determined by the storage-discharge relation to an error term. The error term encompasses a time-variant human interference and a discharge function error, and is determined through an optimization-based calibration procedure, It is found that the calibration procedure with consideration of human interference not only results in a better match of modeled and observed hydrograph, but also more reasonable model parameters in terms of their spatial distribution and the robustness of the parameter values.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 97-111 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Journal of Hydroinformatics |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 2008 |
Keywords
- Automatic callibration
- Genetic algorithms
- Human interference
- Multi-objective optimization
- Rainfall-runoff modeling
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Civil and Structural Engineering
- Water Science and Technology
- Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology
- Atmospheric Science