Spatial estimation in water resources at the regional scale (Marie Curie)

01.02.2003 - 30.12.2005
Research funding project
The objectives of this project are to develop methods that allow accurate and robust estimation of hydrological quantities at the regional scale, as well as assessing their reliability, particularly for ungauged catchments in an alpine setting. Hydrologic data covering the entire territory of Austria will be used most of which are already available at the host institution. In a first step, a hydrologic water balance model will be extended by a stochastic component to improve the results of the deterministic model through exploiting spatial correlations. Based on data assimilation techniques, snow data will be used to constrain the model. In a second step, prognostic relationships for the model parameters for ungauged catchments wil be derived and used for robustifying the regional estimation of the model. This has the benefit of exploiting all available sources of information (streamflow data, catchment characteristics, geographical location). In a final step, an uncertainty analysis will be performed in which the cross-validation of models will be done by both jack-knife and sensitivity tests to shed light on which of the aspects one would have to determine most accurately in such an alpine setting. The project results will enable better predictions of hydrological quantities at sites where data are absent or inadequate, as is often needed in water resources management, as well as a better appreciation of the water balance and hydrologic extremes in alpine regions.

People

Project leader

Project personnel

Institute

Grant funds

  • European Commission (EU) Other EU Research Initiative European Commission Call identifier IHP-MCFI-99-1 Application number 01872

Keywords

GermanEnglish
Wasserwirtschaftwater resources management
WasserbilanzWater balance

Publications