Towards More Trustworthy Hydrologic Models: Evaluating Model Choices and Learning from Data
James R. Craig
Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo
ABSTRACT: Numerical models of watershed hydrology are used to assess impacts of climate change and land use, to manage flood risk, to predict reservoir inflows, and to inform weather, carbon cycling, and nutrient transport models. Unfortunately, the challenge of building operational models that get the right answers for the right reasons is a considerable one: we need to address issues of uncertainty, upscaling, information loss, parameterization, soft data, faulty conceptual models, and a legacy of poorly constructed computational codes pushed beyond their original design. There is considerable uncertainty present when we use these models to interpret observation data and test hypotheses about watershed functioning. In this presentation, Craig discusses some of these issues, their potential solutions, and suggests some necessary steps for moving forward.
