HydroProg: a system for hydrologic forecasting in real time based on the multimodelling approach

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present the concept of a novel system, known as HydroProg, that aims to issue flood warnings in real time on the basis of numerous hydrological predictions computed using various models.The core infrastructure of the system is hosted by the University of Wrocław, Poland. A newly-established computational centre provides in real time, courtesy of the project Partners, various modelling groups, referred to as "project Participants", with hydrometeorological data. The project Participants, having downloaded the most recent observations, are requested to run their hydrologic models on their machines and to provide the HydroProg system with the most up-to-date prediction of riverflow. The system gathers individual forecasts derived by the Participants and processes them in order to compute the ensemble prediction based on multiple models, following the approach known as multimodelling. The system is implemented in R and, in order to attain the above-mentioned functionality, is equipped with numerous scripts that manipulate PostgreSQL-and MySQL-managed databases and control the data quality as well as the data processing flow. As a result, the Participants are provided with multivariate hydrometeorological time series with sparse outliers and without missing values, and they may use these data to run their models. The first strategic project Partner is the County Office in Kłodzko, Poland, owner of the Local System for Flood Monitoring in Kłodzko County. The experimental implementation of the HydroProg system in the Nysa Kłodzka river basin has been completed, and six hydrologic models are run by scientists or research groups from the University of Wrocław, Poland, who act as Participants. Herein, we shows a single prediction exercise which serves as an example of the HydroProg performance.

Real-time hydrograph modelling in the upper Nysa Kłodzka river basin (SW Poland): a two-model hydrologic ensemble prediction approach

“…Recently, a new experimental real-time HEPS, based on the concept of multimodelling, has been prototyped. The system, known as HydroProg, serves as a real-time early warning platform that integrates observational networks with hydrologic models run externally by various modellers/teams, combining the individual hydrologic ensemble members into the multimodel hydrologic ensemble forecast (Niedzielski et al 2014). The concept of keeping models outside of the forecasting systems has been used in the Delft-FEWS solution (Werner et al 2013).…”

Forecasting the Nysa Kłodzka flow rate in order to predict the available flow for a run-off-river (ROR) power plant

“…Obtained results were then compared with those available at HydroProg hydrological forecasting system (free access: http://www.klodzko.hydroprog.uni.wroc.pl/) which is a well-known and established forecasts source for the Nysa Kłodzka catchment [12,20,21]. Because the forecasting performance of the models available there is assessed based on two criteria, namely: rootmean squared error (RMSE) and Nash-Sutcliffe [25] model efficiency coefficient (E) they were also applied in this study.…”

“…Using LSOP hydrological data the HydroProg forecasting system was applied in the recent years [12,20,21]. …”

“…Total capacity of all actually existing hydropower plants on the Nysa Klodzka River covers nearly 17.6 MW. [9,12,20,21] Hydrometeorological data were derived from the national hydrological and meteorological measurement and observational network held by Institute of Meteorology and Water Management -National Research Institute (IMWM-NRI). In the Nysa Kłodzka river catchment there are monitoring structures there are 12 water level gauges including hydrological station in Bardo, and about 12 meteorological stations including synoptic station in Kłodzko (Fig.…”

“…Above described situation in Polish renewable energy market and current problems in area of RES enable formulation of a following goal of this study: "Assessment of the possibility of applying artificial neural networks (ANN) to create a flow rate forecast with a one hour lead time for Nysa Kłodzka river and juxtapose obtained results with those coming from current models used by HydroProg [12].…”