An improved hybrid data-driven model and its application in daily rainfall-runoff simulation

Abstract

In previous literatures, a coupled data-driven rainfall-runoff (RR) model, NU-PEK, has been proposed and successfully applied in hourly RR simulation task. However, numerical experiments show that its performance for daily RR simulation is unsatisfactory. It is noticed that the poor performance is due to the inability of the original model to capture the much higher non-linear characteristics contained in the daily data. In order to improve the nonlinearity simulation capability of the original model, an improved model named NU-PKEK and its calibration methodology are developed in this paper. The improved model is constituted by adding a K-means clustering module and utilizing multiple NU-PEK modules instead of using only one NU-PEK model. This study applies the improved model, the Xinanjiang model, and the original model for daily RR simulation in Chengcun catchment for intercomparison and verification. The simulation results prove that the NU-PKEK performs best, and has better simulation and forecasting capability.