High-resolution hydrologic forecasting for very large urban areas

Abstract With continuing growth of urban populations worldwide, high-resolution hydrologic forecasting is an increasingly important hydroinformatics service for large urban areas. In the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area, the Collaborative Adapting Sensing of Atmosphere (CASA) WX program has been providi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of hydroinformatics 2019-05, Vol.21 (3), p.441-454
Main Authors: Habibi, Hamideh, Dasgupta, Ishita, Noh, Seongjin, Kim, Sunghee, Zink, Michael, Seo, Dong-Jun, Bartos, Matthew, Kerkez, Branko
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmospheric models
Basins
Calibration
Catchment area
Catchments
Cloud computing
Creeks & streams
Feasibility studies
Floods
Forecasting
High resolution
Hydrologic cycle
Hydrologic models
Hydrologic research
Hydrology
Kinematics
Laboratories
Mathematical models
Parallel processing
Precipitation
Pressure transducers
Radar
Rain
Rainfall
Real time
Resolution
Run time (computers)
Runoff
Sensors
Spatial discrimination
Spatial resolution
Stream discharge
Stream flow
Stress concentration
Superhigh frequencies
Urban areas
Urban catchments
Urban populations
Water levels
Weather forecasting
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Summary:Abstract With continuing growth of urban populations worldwide, high-resolution hydrologic forecasting is an increasingly important hydroinformatics service for large urban areas. In the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area, the Collaborative Adapting Sensing of Atmosphere (CASA) WX program has been providing real-time hydrologic products, such as rainfall and streamflow, at 1 min–500 m resolution using the NWS Research Hydrologic Distributed Model forced by the Quantitative Precipitation Estimate from a network of X-band weather radars. There is an increasing demand, however, for even higher-spatial resolution hydrologic products. In this paper, we assess the ability of the current streamflow product to capture the hydrologic response of urban catchments in the DFW area, the utility of ultrasonic distance sensors for real-time sensing of water level in urban streams, and the feasibility of higher-resolution operation using parallel processing and cloud computing. We show that the CASA WX streamflow product skillfully captures the stage and streamflow response from rainfall for the majority of the nine catchments studied, but that timing errors significantly deteriorate the quality of streamflow prediction for certain basins. Comparative evaluation of different computing models shows that a reduction in runtime of up to 34% is possible with parallel processing at 1 min–250 m resolution.
ISSN:1464-7141
1465-1734
DOI:10.2166/hydro.2019.100