Coupling stochastic and deterministic hydrologic models for decision-making

Abstract

Many planning decisions related to the land phase of the hydrologic cycle involve uncertainty due to stochasticity of rainfall inputs and uncertainty in state and knowledge of hydrologic processes. Consideration of this uncertainty in planning requires quantification in the form of probability distributions. Needed probability distributions, for many cases, must be obtained by transforming distributions of rainfall input and hydrologic state through deterministic models of hydrologic processes. Probability generating functions are used to derive a recursive technique that provides the necessary probability transformation for situations where the hydrologic output of interest is the cumulative effect of a random number of stochastic inputs. The derived recursive technique is observed to be quite accurate from a comparison of probability distributions obtained independently by the recursive technique and an exact analytic method for a simple problem that can be solved with the analytic method. The assumption of Poisson occurrence of rainfall events, which is inherent in derivation of the recursive technique, is examined and found reasonable for practical application. Application of the derived technique is demonstrated on two important hydrology-related problems. It is first demonstrated for computing probability distributions of annual direct runoff from a watershed using the USDA Soil Conservation Service (SCS) direct runoff model and stochastic models for rainfall event depth and watershed state. The technique is also demonstrated for obtaining probability distributions of annual sediment yield. For this demonstration, the deterministic transform model consists of a parametric event-based sediment yield model and the SCS models for direct runoff volume and peak flow rate. The stochastic rainfall model consists of a marginal Weibull distribution for rainfall event duration and a conditional log-normal distribution for rainfall event depth given duration. The stochastic state model is the same as employed for the direct runoff application. Probability distributions obtained with the recursive technique for both the direct runoff and sediment yield demonstration examples appear to be reasonable when compared to available data. It is therefore concluded that the recursive technique, derived from probability generating functions, is a feasible transform method that can be useful for coupling stochastic models of rainfall input and state to deterministic models of hydrologic processes to obtain probability distributions of outputs where these outputs are cumulative effects of random numbers of stochastic inputs.