On the Value of Hydrological Models Developed in the Context of Undergraduate Education for Discharge Prediction and Reservoir Management

Abstract

A conceptual hydrological catchment model called ‘student model’ is introduced which has been interactively developed within an undergraduate course on hydrological modelling at Siegen University (BSc Civil Engineering). After successful model calibration and model validation to a German mesoscale catchment, the ‘student’ model is applied to quantify the impact of regional climate change scenarios on the water budget of the Wiehl drinking water reservoir. The simulation results show that the conceptual ‘student model’ performs well for both calibration and validation periods. It well represents the variability in water flows at different timescales and therefore has the potential to be used for scenario analysis. The ‘student model’ shows a comparable reaction to climate change scenarios as sophisticated hydrological catchment models did which were applied to neighboured catchments in North Rhine-Westphalia based on the same underlying parent scenarios. The magnitude of the simulated climate impacts on seasonal water balances and extreme flows indicates that current reservoir management needs to be adjusted to the projected variability of inflows to the reservoir. Despite its simplicity, the ‘student model’ can have a high value for reservoir management. It well represents the inflow into the reservoir based on available data and provides a reliable estimate of climate change impacts, indicating the necessity of adjustment of the operation rules in the future. At the same time it remains transparent to the model users, offering a simple but realistic training tool for the generation of reservoir inflow time series. It therefore can contribute to the solution of recent hydrological and water management problems. Restrictions of such models are due to the lumped nature and the limited applicability for a priori predictions.