Adaptive Use of a Conceptual Model for Real Time Flood Forecasting

This paper investigates the adaptive use of a simple conceptual lumped rainfall-runoff model based on a Probability Distributed Model complemented with a Geomorphological Unit Hydrograph. Three different approaches for updating the model and for its use for real time flood forecasting are compared: the first two are based on a parameter updating approach; in the third procedure the model is cast into a state-space form and an Extended Kalman Filter is applied for the on-line estimation of the state variables. The comparison shows that the procedure based on the filtering techniques provides more reliable results; acceptable results are also obtained by using a parameter updating approach based on the on-line adjustment of the initial conditions.