Abstract
Abstract. Reproducibility and repeatability of experiments are the fundamental prerequisites that allow researchers to validate results and share hydrological knowledge, experience and expertise in the light of global water management problems. Virtual laboratories offer new opportunities to enable these prerequisites since they allow experimenters to share data, tools and pre-defined experimental procedures (i.e. protocols). Here we present the outcomes of a first collaborative numerical experiment undertaken by five different international research groups in a virtual laboratory to address the key issues of reproducibility and repeatability. Moving from the definition of accurate and detailed experimental protocols, a rainfall–runoff model was independently applied to 15 European catchments by the research groups and model results were collectively examined through a web-based discussion. We found that a detailed modelling protocol was crucial to ensure the comparability and reproducibility of the proposed experiment across groups. Our results suggest that sharing comprehensive and precise protocols and running the experiments within a controlled environment (e.g. virtual laboratory) is as fundamental as sharing data and tools for ensuring experiment repeatability and reproducibility across the broad scientific community and thus advancing hydrology in a more coherent way.
Highlights
Global water resources are increasingly recognised to be a major concern for the sustainable development of a society (e.g. Haddeland et al, 2014; Schewe et al, 2014; Berghuijs et al, 2014)
After presenting the structure of the Virtual Water-Science Laboratory (VWSL), we describe in detail the collaborative experiment, carried out by the research groups in the VWSL
In what follows we report the experiences gained from the experiment, and we suggest a process that enables research groups to improve the set-up of protocols
Summary
Global water resources are increasingly recognised to be a major concern for the sustainable development of a society (e.g. Haddeland et al, 2014; Schewe et al, 2014; Berghuijs et al, 2014). Land use and climate will likely exacerbate the current circumstances (Montanari et al, 2013). Water availability and distribution support both ecosystem (Ceola et al, 2013, 2014a) and human demand for drinking water, food, sanitation, energy, industrial production, transport and recreation. Water is recognised as the most important environmental hazard: floods (Ceola et al, 2014), droughts and water-borne diseases (Rinaldo et al, 2012) cause thousands of casualties, famine, significant disruption and damage worth billions every year Efficient water management is crucial for the sustainable development of human society.
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