LIANG Li-li 1, YE Yun-tao 2, GONG Jia-guo 2, LI Kuang 1

1. Beijing IWHR Technology Co., Ltd, Beijing 100038;
2. State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China

Abstract: In view of the fact that the distributed hydrological model based on physical mechanism has not been popularized in the short-term hydrological forecast, its feasibility of the application in the short-term hydrological forecast is demonstrated in detail. Taking one of the distributed hydrological models -- Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) as an example, this paper presents its principles, methods and basic steps of the hydrological processes simulation, and discusses the application of distributed hydrological mod el in the short-term hydrological forecast in connection with key techniques, for example, the precipitation forecast techniques, the spatial distribution techniques of precipitation data, the GIS, RS and GPS techniques, the slope discretization techniques of a watershed, and the processing techniques of man-made water cycles. Then difficulties and disadvantages are summarized when it is used in the short-term hydrological forecast, such as the insufficient input data, the deficiency of the model itself, the tradeoff of model calculation efficiency and accuracy. Finally, it is proposed that it is necessary to strengthen the mechanism research of the water cycle and the research on the coupled meteorological model and “3S” technology.

Key words: hydrological forecast; distributed hydrological model; SWAT model; forecasting period

Published in: Journal of China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (Vol. 11 No. 3, 2013)