Hydrological model parameterising using various automatic calibration techniques

Hydrological models are used for various water resources application. To represent hydrological processes, it need parameters that achieve a discharge simulation as close to the observed series as possible. The simulation result depends on how accurately the models parameters are calibrated. The calibration of model parameters depend on various factors, such as calibration methods and selected objective functions. In this study, some of the automatic calibration methods were investigated and a comparison was made to give better prediction. Different optimization algorithms like SCE-UA, SA, and ROPE were used to illustrate and calibrate the conceptual model HBV-IWS. The study was conducted on the Upper Neckar catchment, Germany. The results show that almost all optimization algorithms gave a very similar result, but the ROPE algorithm seems to be more robust. This is due to ROPE giving a space of parameter values after calibration, instead of a single parameter set as in other optimizations.