Approach to a new forecasting method of hydrological variables in tropical basins

Abstract

In this paper, an approach to a new method for the spatio-temporal forecasting of hydrological variables in basins is proposed termed as CIHAM-UC-SPF-HV. This was demonstrated using as hydrological variables to the precipitation and evaporation measured in 174 and 82 monitoring stations respectively, during period 1960–2000 located in the UTM zone 19 North of Venezuela and the indirect variable estimated by a water balance. This comprises the stages: 1) Collection of hydrological data, 2) Estimation of hydrological variable's spatial prediction, 3) Temporal forecasting of parameters derived from statistical spatial prediction model for hydrological variables, 4) Spatio-Temporal forecasting of hydrological variables, and 5) Validation of the results in the forecasted hydrological variables. The main advantages are: 1) the combination of deterministic and spatially correlated random components, both of these supported by historical records associated to time series of hydrological variables, and 2) multiple mathematical structures contribute to predict the parameters of statistical spatial forecasting model of the hydrological variables, selecting that by which the seasonal pattern and trend to be the closest to the observed values. The method is suitable to reproduce the spatio-temporal pattern between observed and forecasted values below two standard deviation of the mean values.