Exploring the Application of Flood Scaling Property in Hydrological Model Calibration

Abstract

Abstract Model calibration has always been one major challenge in the hydrological community. Flood scaling properties (FS) are often used to estimate the flood quantiles for data-scarce catchments based on the statistical relationship between flood peak and contributing areas. This paper investigates the potential of applying FS and multivariate flood scaling properties [multiple linear regression (MLR)] as constraints in model calibration. Based on the assumption that the scaling property of flood exists in four study catchments in northern China, eight calibration scenarios are designed with adopting different combinations of traditional indicators and FS or MLR as objective functions. The performance of the proposed method is verified by employing a distributed hydrological model, namely, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The results indicate that reasonable performance could be obtained in FS with fewer requirements of observed streamflow data, exhibiting better simulation of flood peaks than the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient calibration scenario. The observed streamflow data or regional flood information are required in the MLR calibration scenario to identify the dominant catchment descriptors, and MLR achieves better performance on catchment interior points, especially for the events with uneven distribution of rainfall. On account of the improved performance on hydrographs and flood frequency curve at the watershed outlet, adopting the statistical indicators and flood scaling property simultaneously as model constraints is suggested. The proposed methodology enhances the physical connection of flood peak among subbasins and considers watershed actual conditions and climatic characteristics for each flood event, facilitating a new calibration approach for both gauged catchments and data-scarce catchments. Significance Statement This paper proposes a new hydrological model calibration strategy that explores the potential of applying flood scaling properties as constraints. The proposed method effectively captures flood peaks with fewer requirements of observed streamflow time series data, providing a new alternative method in hydrological model calibration for ungauged watersheds. For gauged watersheds, adopting flood scaling properties as model constraints could make the hydrological model calibration more physically based and improve the performance at catchment interior points. We encourage this novel method to be adopted in model calibration for both gauged and data-scarce watersheds.