Calibration and validation of selected rainfall-runoff model in the Chad river basin area

Abdulrasheed Ali Musa

Diplomová práce

Abstract:

Water resources management issues like surface water availability and flooding along the downstream of the Hadejia river basin a sub-catchment of the Chad basin have been prevalent issues for a very long time. To address these issues, a proper water resources management strategy like hydrological modelling of the basin is vital in ensuring accurate and reliable water behaviour prediction. This study evaluates the performance of calibration and validation of two selected rainfall-runoff models, GR4J and lumped component of dHRUM in this river basin using hydrological performance metrics- Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE). The calibration used a fixed-window method of splitting the dataset into five non-overlapping eight-year sub-periods based on the hydrological year from May to April while validation used cross-validation of independent subperiods. The results indicate that dHRUM performed better than GR4J by attaining a higher NSE and KGE across different sub-periods. Hydrograph analysis showed that dHRUM represented peak and base flows better. dHRUM groundwater reservoir type selection, LIN_RES and LINBY_RES greatly impact its performance with LINBY_RES doing better at capturing seasonal variations. Findings from this study demonstrate dHRUM robustness in semi-arid regions and point to possible improvement for GR4J in future applications.

Keywords

Runoff, River basin, Hadejia river, GR4J, dHRUM

Jazyk práce: angličtina

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 3. 4. 2025

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Obhajoba proběhla 20. 5. 2025
• Vedoucí: doc. Ing. Petr Máca, Ph.D.
• Oponent: Luděk Bureš, Ph.D.

Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze

Fakulta životního prostředí

Magisterský studijní program:
Environmental Modelling