Error Analysis of the Finite Volume Based Regional Simulation Model, RSM

A fully integrated regional simulation model (RSM) has been developed to simulate the complex hydrologic system of South Florida. The South Florida system consists of a large integrated overland flow system, a groundwater flow system and a canal flow system. Implicit solution methods, efficient sparse solvers, and object oriented methods have made it possible to solve large complex systems simultaneously with practically any time step and cell size, even when the numerical errors can be extremely large. The current study is aimed at understanding the numerical error due to a boundary disturbance under a variety of spatial and temporal discretizations and solution characteristics. The errors are compared with the analytical estimates obtained by Lal for finite difference problems. Results of the study are useful in determining optimal spatial and temporal discretizations for model applications.