Vojtěch Bareš

Model bias and complexity - Understanding the effects of structural deficits and input errors on runoff predictions

Oversimplified models and erroneous inputs play a significant role in impairing environmental predictions. To assess the contribution of these errors to model uncertainties is still challenging. Our objective is to understand the effect of model complexity on systematic modeling errors. Our method consists of formulating alternative models with increasing detail and flexibility and describing their systematic deviations by an autoregressive bias process. We test the approach in an urban catchment with five drainage models. Our results show that a single bias description produces reliable predictions for all models. The bias decreases with increasing model complexity and then stabilizes. The bias decline can be associated with reduced structural deficits, while the remaining bias is probably dominated by input errors. Combining a bias description with a multimodel comparison is an effective way to assess the influence of structural and rainfall errors on flow forecasts. We investigate how a random bias process behaves as a function of model complexity.We analyze 5 model structures to simulate a stormwater system.The reduction of systematic deviations is associated with decreasing structural deficits.In this study the remaining bias is likely to be dominated by input errors.The method provides sound probabilistic predictions in a relatively efficient way.

Commercial microwave links instead of rain gauges: fiction or reality?

Commercial microwave links (MWLs) were suggested about a decade ago as a new source for quantitative precipitation estimates (QPEs). Meanwhile, the theory is well understood and rainfall monitoring with MWLs is on its way to being a mature technology, with several well-documented case studies, which investigate QPEs from multiple MWLs on the mesoscale. However, the potential of MWLs to observe microscale rainfall variability, which is important for urban hydrology, has not been investigated yet. In this paper, we assess the potential of MWLs to capture the spatio-temporal rainfall dynamics over small catchments of a few square kilometres. Specifically, we investigate the influence of different MWL topologies on areal rainfall estimation, which is important for experimental design or to a priori check the feasibility of using MWLs. In a dedicated case study in Prague, Czech Republic, we collected a unique dataset of 14 MWL signals with a temporal resolution of a few seconds and compared the QPEs from the MWLs to reference rainfall from multiple rain gauges. Our results show that, although QPEs from most MWLs are probably positively biased, they capture spatio-temporal rainfall variability on the microscale very well. Thus, they have great potential to improve runoff predictions. This is especially beneficial for heavy rainfall, which is usually decisive for urban drainage design.

Experimental investigation of internal structure of open-channel flow with intense transport of sediment

Abstract Gravity-driven open-channel flows carrying coarse sediment over an erodible granular deposit are studied. Results of laboratory experiments with artificial sediments in a rectangular tilting flume are described and analyzed. Besides integral quantities such as flow rate of mixture, transport concentration of sediment and hydraulic gradient, the experiments include measurements of the one-dimensional velocity distribution across the flow. A vertical profile of the longitudinal component of local velocity is measured across the vertical axis of symmetry of a flume cross section using three independent measuring methods. Due to strong flow stratification, the velocity profile covers regions of very different local concentrations of sediment from virtually zero concentration to the maximum concentration of bed packing. The layered character of the flow results in a velocity distribution which tends to be different in the transport layer above the bed and in the sediment-free region between the top of the transport layer and the water surface. Velocity profiles and integral flow quantities are analyzed with the aim of evaluating the layered structure of the flow and identifying interfaces in the flow with a developed transport layer above the upper plane bed.