Rainfall-Runoff Modelling : The Primer

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

Rainfall-Runoff Modelling The Primer is the first comprehensive introduction and survey of rainfall-runoff modelling since 1975. Dramatic increases in computer power and spatial databases since then have made unprecedented resources available to the modeller today. However, the early modellers would not have expected that the representations of hydrological processes by computer models would have proven such a difficult scientific problem. This book provides both a primer for the novice and a detailed and practical description of techniques and difficulties demanded by more advanced users and developers. The complete range of rainfall-runoff models is reviewed including models for real time flood forecasting and for predicting the impacts of land use and climate changes with example applications. This is the first text to include methods for estimating the uncertainty in predictions as an essential tool for the novice in making hydrological predictions.
The author 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.
This book will appeal to the novice, final year undergraduates and graduate students, hydrological researchers and consultants, and environmental agencies.