A Modular Open-Source Suite of Notebooks for Multi-Process Hydrological Analysis with GEOframe

Hydrological models are essential tools for simulating the water cycle and supporting decision-making in water resource management, especially in the context of climate change and increasing hydrological extremes. Among semi-distributed models, the GEOframe system, developed at the University of Trento, stands out for its process-based and modular architecture. However, previous versions were overly complex, fragmented across multiple programming languages, and lacked unified documentation, hindering accessibility, reproducibility, and adoption beyond academics. To address these challenges, we present a fully restructured, open-source workflow that standardizes the hydrological modeling process, from geomorphological analysis to rainfall-runoff simulation, supporting hillslopes, natural lakes, artificial reservoirs for hydropower, and diversion flows. The new framework integrates all components within user-friendly Python-based Jupyter Notebooks, simplifying data preparation, model configuration, execution, and output analysis while eliminating manual interaction with Java-based tools, facilitating teaching and use by practitioners and local authorities. For the first time, GEOframe becomes an interchangeable Python object that can be plugged into third-party modules, as demonstrated here with a sensitivity analysis package. Applied to the Brenta and Avisio catchments (North-Eastern Italian Alps) and benchmarked against HBV, GEOframe effectively reproduces discharge, snow dynamics, evapotranspiration, and storage variations.