A Comparative Evaluation of Short-Term Streamflow Forecasting Using Time Series Analysis and Rainfall-Runoff Models in eWater Source

Dushmanta Dutta (), Wendy Welsh, Jai Vaze, Shaun Kim and David Nicholls

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2012, vol. 26, issue 15, 4397-4415

Abstract: Over the past few decades, many numerical streamflow prediction techniques using observed time series (TS) have been developed and widely used in water resources planning and management. Recent advances in quantitative rainfall forecasting by numerical weather prediction (NWP) models have made it possible to produce improved streamflow forecasts using continuous rainfall-runoff (RR) models. In the absence of a suitable integrated system of NWP, RR and river system models, river operators in Australia mostly use spreadsheet-based tools to forecast streamflow using gauged records. The eWater Cooperative Research Centre of Australia has recently developed a new generation software package called eWater Source, which allows a seamless integration of continuous RR and river system models for operational and planning purposes. This paper presents the outcomes of a study that was carried out using Source for a comparative evaluation of streamflow forecasting by several well-known TS based linear techniques and RR models in two selected sub-basins in the upper Murray river system of the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia. The results were compared with the actual forecasts made by the Murray River operators and the observed data. The results show that while streamflow forecasts by the river operators were reasonably accurate up to day 3 and traditional TS based approaches were reasonably accurate up to 2 days. Well calibrated RR models can provide better forecasts for longer periods when using high quality quantitative precipitation forecasts. The river operators tended to underestimate large magnitude flows. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Keywords: Stream flow forecast; Time series analysis; Rainfall-runoff model; River system model; eWater source (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-012-0151-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:26:y:2012:i:15:p:4397-4415

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-012-0151-9

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().