Rainfall-Runoff Modelling

Amid climatic changes linked to global warming, on-going changes in land-use patterns, and growing concern with hydrology as an international issue, it is increasingly important to understand the potential impact of these changes on the water environment. Rainfall-runoff modeling is an important predictor of that impact.

This book provides a summary of the development of rainfall-runoff models, giving examples of their practical applications. It introduces the different techniques for rainfall-runoff modeling, based upon the most recent research, but in a way that serves as a primer for the subject.

• Provides an overview of how catchment rainfall-runoff systems work
• A history of rainfall-runoff models
• Examples of models which can be downloaded over the Internet
• Looks at uncertainty in model prediction

Keith Beven wrote his first hydrological model as an undergraduate in 1970, trying to predict the runoff generation on Exmoor during the Lynmouth flood. Since then, he has been involved with many of the major rainfall-runoff modelling innovations, including TOPMODEL, the Système Hydrologique Europèen (SHE) model, the Institute of Hydrology Distributed Model (IHDM), and Data-based mechanistic modelling (DBM). In 1991 he was awarded the American Geophysical Union Horton Award for fundamental contributions to the understanding and prediction of runoff production, particularly the role of topography and soil structure, in natural catchments. He has been Professor of Hydrology and Fluid Dynamics at Lancaster University since 1992.