This work addresses the calibration of the distributed rainfall-runoff model LISFLOOD and, in particular, the realistic quantification of parameter uncertainty and its effect on the prediction of river discharges for large European catchments. LISFLOOD is driven by meteorological input data and simulates river discharge in large drainage basins as a function of spatial information on topography, soils and land cover. Even though LISFLOOD is physically-based to a certain extent, some processes are only represented in a lumped conceptual way. As a result, some parameters lack physical basis and cannot be directly inferred from quantities that can be measured. In the current LISFLOOD version five parameters need to be determined by calibration. We employ the Shuffled Complex Evolution Metropolis (SCEM-UA) global optimization algorithm to automatically calibrate the model against daily discharge observations. The resulting posterior parameter distribution reflects the residual uncertainty about the model parameters and forms the basis for making probabilistic flow predictions. To overcome the computational burden the optimization has been implemented using parallel computing. As an illustrative example, we demonstrate the methodology for the Meuse catchment upstream of Borgharen, covering approximately 21.000 km2. Results demonstrate the capabilities of the SCEM-UA algorithm to efficiently evolve to the target posterior distribution and to identify, except for the lower groundwater zone time constant, the LISFLOOD calibration parameters using daily discharge observations.

FEYEN Luc;  VRUGT Jasper A.;  BREANNDAN O Nuallain;  VAN DER KNIJFF Johannes;  DE ROO Arie; 

2007-01-29

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

JRC30611

0022-1694,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC30611,   

10.1016/j.jhydrol.2006.07.004,