Data-Driven Modeling and the Influence of Objective Function Selection on Model Performance in Limited Data Regions

Thelma Dede Baddoo, Zhijia Li, Yiqing Guan, Kenneth Rodolphe Chabi Boni and Isaac Kwesi Nooni
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Thelma Dede Baddoo: State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Zhijia Li: College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Yiqing Guan: College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Kenneth Rodolphe Chabi Boni: College of Computer and Information Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 211100, China
Isaac Kwesi Nooni: School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 11, 1-26

Abstract: The identification of unit hydrographs and component flows from rainfall, evapotranspiration and streamflow data (IHACRES) model has been proven to be an efficient yet basic model to simulate rainfall–runoff processes due to the difficulty in obtaining the comprehensive data required by physical models, especially in data-scarce, semi-arid regions. The success of a calibration process is tremendously dependent on the objective function chosen. However, objective functions have been applied largely in over daily and monthly scales and seldom over sub-daily scales. This study, therefore, implements the IHACRES model using ‘hydromad’ in R to simulate flood events with data limitations in Zhidan, a semi-arid catchment in China. We apply objective function constraints by time aggregating the commonly used Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency into daily and hourly scales to investigate the influence of objective function constraints on the model performance and the general capability of the IHACRES model to simulate flood events in the study watershed. The results of the study demonstrated the advantage of the finer time-scaled hourly objective function over its daily counterpart in simulating runoff for the selected flood events. The results also indicated that the IHACRES model performed extremely well in the Zhidan watershed, presenting the feasibility of the use of the IHACRES model to simulate flood events in data scarce, semi-arid regions.

Keywords: data-driven modeling; objective function selection; Zhidan watershed; IHACRES; hydromad; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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