Session 1.3 A distributed rainfall runoff model to use in Mediterranean basins with radar rainfall estimates

Thursday, 19 July 2001: 10:15 AM
Carles Corral, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain; and D. Sempere-Torres and M. Berenguer

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A conceptual distributed rainfall runoff model able to work with radar rainfall fields is presented. This model has been developed taking into account the Mediterranean hydrologic features, and it is oriented to be adapted to real time requirements. The basin is split in cells of 2 by 2 km2 (according to radar resolution). Each cell is treated as a hydrological unit, where a lumped model is applied. Two models are selected to reproduce the rainfall runoff transformation at cell scale, depending on the degree of urbanisation. TOPMODEL is applied in rural cells, while the SCS production function is applied in highly urbanised cells. Once the runoff cell is computed, it is routed until the outlet following a single unit hydrograph process from the definition of a simplified drainage network, where the water pathway is divided into hillslope path and river path. A case study in Besòs catchment (1000 km2, in Barcelona area) is presented. The basin is instrumented by several telemetered rain and streamflow gauges, and the area is well covered by the radar range. The streamflow data, as well as the available rainfall data, are used to fit the model. Results show the importance of using processed radar information to improve flow reconstitutios and to achieve better model adjustment.
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