Ensemble hydrological prediction of streamflow percentile at ungauged basins in Pakistan

Abstract

Summary Streamflow records with sufficient spatial and temporal coverage at the site of interest are usually scarce in Pakistan. As an alternative, various regional methods have been frequently adopted to derive hydrological information, which in essence attempt to transfer hydrological information from gauged to ungauged catchments. In this study, a new concept of ensemble hydrological prediction (EHP) was introduced which is an improved regional method for hydrological prediction at ungauged sites. It was mainly based on the performance weights (triple-connection weights (TCW)) derived from Nash Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and hydrological variable (here percentiles) calculated from three traditional regional transfer methods (RTMs) with suitable modification (i.e., three-step drainage area ratio (DAR) method, inverse distance weighting (IDW) method, and three-step regional regression analysis (RRA)). The overall results indicated that the proposed EHP method was robust for estimating hydrological percentiles at ungauged sites as compared to traditional individual RTMs. The comparative study based on NSE, percent bias (PBIAS) and the relative error (RE) as performance criteria resulted that the EHP is a constructive alternative for hydrological prediction of ungauged basins.