Application of the QUAL2Kw model to a Polluted River for Automatic Calibration and Sensitivity Analysis of Genetic Algorithm Parameters

Abstract

The QUAL2K has the same basic characteristics as the QUAL2E model, which has been widely used in stream water quality modeling; in QUAL2K, however, various functions are supplemented. The QUAL2Kw model uses a genetic algorithm(GA) for automatic calibration of QUAL2K, and it can search for optimum water quality parameters efficiently using the calculation results of the model. The QUAL2Kw model was applied to the Gangneung Namdaecheon River on the east side of the Korean Peninsula. Because of the effluents from the urban area, the middle and lower parts of the river are more polluted than the upper parts. Moreover, the hydraulic characteristics differ between the lower and upper parts of rivers. Thus, the river reaches were divided into seven parts, auto-calibration for the multiple reaches was performed using the function of the user-defined automatic calibration of the rates worksheets. Because GA parameters affect the optimal solution of the model, the impact of the GA parameters used in QUAL2Kw on the fitness of the model was analyzed. Sensitivity analysis of various factors, such as population size, crossover probability, crossover mode, strategy for mutation and elitism, mutation rate, and reproduction plan, were performed. Using the results of this sensitivity analysis, the optimum GA parameters were selected to achieve the best fitness value.