Modelling water availability and water allocation strategies in the Scheldt basin: sub report 4-2. Developing a rainfall-runoff model of the Meuse – NAM Meuse

In order to correctly simulate the water availability in the Albert Canal and the Campine Canals, it is important to correctly simulate the flow in the Meuse river. The river is the source for this vast canal system. If it is possible to simulate the hydrology of the Meuse basin, it will be possible to model the water balance of the canal system for a period of over 40 years. The modelling has been done using the NAM software (©DHI).The Meuse catchment is split up in 11 sub catchments. One big catchment of the Meuse itself upstream from Profondeville, 7 catchments of different scale of the tributaries downstream of Profondeville and 3 smaller catchments representing the ungauged area downstream Profondeville. Except for the catchment upstream from Profondeville, the catchments are calibrated separately to find an optimal parameter set. To assess the parameters for modelling the upstream catchment, the latter was split in 5 sub catchments which were calibrated separately. However, for the purpose of the water availability modelling of the Albert Canal and Campine canals, the area upstream from Profondeville is simulated by using the parameters of the biggest sub catchment (i.e. the French part of the Meuse catchment).The optimization during calibration is performed based on an automatic procedure, followed by a visual control. During the optimization routine the parameter sets are selected based on 2 criteria: (1) absolute error on cumulated total flow at each time step, and (2) logarithmic Nash-Sutcliff efficiency. The first criterion aims to model the global flow pattern, the latter focuses mainly on the low flows. In general the simulation of the hydrology of the Meuse catchment gives fairly good results bearing in mind that it is used for simulations on a regional scale.
Title : FHR reports. Flanders Hydraulics Research: Antwerp Volume : 00_162_4-2 Issue : Pagination : X, 36 + 78 p. app.