Modeling Large River Basins and Flood Plains with Scarce Data: Development of the Large Basin Data Portal

Abstract

Hydrological modeling of large river basins and flood plains continues to be challenged by the low availability and quality of observed data for modeling input and model calibration. Global datasets are often used to bridge this gap, but are often difficult and time consuming to acquire, particularly in low resource regions of the world. Numerous calls have been made to standardize and share data to increase local basin modeling capacities and reduce redundancy in efforts, but barriers still exist. We discuss the challenges of hydrological modeling in data-scarce regions and describe a freely available online tool site developed to enable users to extract input data for any basin of any size. The site will allow users to visualize, map, interpolate, and reformat the data as needed for the intended application. We used our hydrological model of the Upper Zambezi basin and the Chobe-Zambezi floodplains to illustrate the use of this online toolset. Increasing access and dissemination of hydrological modeling data is a critical need, particularly among users where data requirements and access continue to impede locally driven management of hydrological systems.