Modeling of Event and Continuous Flow Hydrographs with HEC–HMS: Case Study in the Kelani River Basin, Sri Lanka
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19, Issue 4
Abstract
This paper describes a case study of event and continuous hydrologic modeling in the Kelani River basin in Sri Lanka using the Hydrologic Engineering Center—Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC–HMS). An extremely high rainfall event in November 2005 was used to calibrate model parameters, and extremely high rainfall events in April–May 2008, May–June 2008, and May 2010 were used to validate the event model. The calibrated, direct runoff and base flow parameters were then used in the continuous hydrologic model. The Green and Ampt infiltration loss method was used to account for infiltration loss in event-based modeling and a five-layer soil moisture accounting loss method was employed in continuous modeling. The Clark unit hydrograph method and the recession base flow method were used to simulate direct runoff and base flow, respectively. The results depict the capability of HEC–HMS to reproduce streamflows in the basin to a high accuracy with averaged computed Nash–Sutcliffe efficiencies of 0.91 for event–based simulations and 0.88 for continuous simulations. Simulated river flows affirm that the event-based hydrologic modeling supported by intensive field data is useful to derive calibrated parameters for continuous hydrologic modeling. The study demonstrates potential HEC–HMS application in disaster mitigation, flood control, and water management in medium-size river basins in tropical countries.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support for this research provided by the Mitsui fund and the UN–CECAR program of United Nations Univ., Japan. Hydrological and meteorological data were obtained from the Dept. of Irrigation and the Dept. of Meteorology, Sri Lanka.
References
Agrawal, A. (2005). “A data model with pre- and post-processor for HEC–HMS.” Rep. of Graduate Studies, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX.
Brevnova, E. V. (2001). “Green–Ampt infiltration model parameter determination using SCS curve number (CN) and soil texture class, and application to the SCS runoff model.” M.Sc. thesis, West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV.
Census of Population and Housing. (2011). “Population by district, sex, sex ratio and population density.” Dept. of Census and Statistics, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Ehret, U., and Zehe, E. (2011). “Series distance—An intuitive metric to quantify hydrograph similarity in terms of occurrence, amplitude and timing of hydrological events.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 15, 877–896.
Feldman, A. D. (2000). “Hydrologic modeling system HEC–HMS Technical reference manual.” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hydrologic Engineering Center, Davis, CA.
Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD). (2009). 〈http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/External-World-soil-database/〉 (Nov. 2, 2011).
Jakeman, A. J., and Hornberger, G. M. (1993). “How much complexity is warranted in a rainfall–runoff model?” Water Resour. Res., 29(8), 2637–2649.
Madsen, H. (2000). “Automatic calibration of a conceptual rainfall–runoff model using multiple objectives.” J. Hydrol., 235(3–4), 276–288.
Maidment, D. R. (1993). Handbook of hydrology, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Moriasi, D. N., Arnold, J. G., Van Liew, M. W., Bingner, R. L., Harmel, R. D., and Veith, T. L. (2007). “Model evaluation guidelines for systematic quantification of accuracy in watershed simulations.” Trans. ASABE, 50(3), 885–900.
Scharffenberg, W. A., and Fleming, M. J. (2006). “Hydrologic modeling system HEC–HMS user’s manual.” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Institute for Water Resources, Hydrologic Engineering Center, Davis, CA.
Todini, E. (1996). “The ARNO rainfall–runoff model.” J. Hydrol., 175(1–4), 339–382.
Xuefeng, C., and Steinman, A. (2009). “Event and continuous hydrologic modeling with HEC–HMS.” J. Irrig. Drain. Eng., 119–124.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19 • Issue 4 • April 2014
Pages: 800 - 806
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 15, 2012
Accepted: May 15, 2013
Published online: May 17, 2013
Discussion open until: Oct 17, 2013
Published in print: Apr 1, 2014
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.