Author(s): Elisa Alessi Celegon; Ludovico Nicotina; Gianluca Botter; Andrea Rinaldo; Marco Marani
Linked Author(s): Marco Marani, Andrea Rinaldo
Keywords: Flood forecasting; Rainfall-runoff; Coupled meteorological-hydrological models
Abstract: This study describes the results obtained by coupling meteorological quantitative precipitation forecasts to a semi-distributed hydrological model. We apply the coupled models to the alpine Piave river basin (North-east Italy, with an area of about 3, 500 km2), characterized by the presence of several artificial reservoirs. The calibration and validation of the hydrological model is based on rain-gauge observations and is performed on the main extreme events in the past 16 years. The model is then coupled to a Limited Area Model with a spatial resolution of 0. 1°*0. 1° (~ 11 Km). We present an analysis of the performance of the meteorological model alone and of the coupled hydrological-meteorological models for two intense rainfall events. The meteorological model shows a tendency to underestimate the rainfall volume over the basin for both the storms considered, while the timing of the rainfall pulses is quite well reproduced. As a consequence, the coupled hydro-meteorological model also yields an overall underestimation of the discharge volume. However, the comparison between observed and forecasted discharges for the events shows the possibility to predict the main characters of the flood hydrograph several days in advance of the peak. This is an encouraging result which requires to be verified for several events and, possibly, for several basins.
Year: 2007