Catchment Multisite Discharge Measurements for Hydrological Model Calibration

This work has the objective to find and test methodologies for distributed hydrological model calibration starting from discharge measurements. As all distributed models, also FEST-WB demands a large amount of information and parameters. To reduce the calibration effort, in this study we assign a first initial distribution of values for each parameter starting from information about soil type and usage and we let calibration change only the mean value, through a correction factor. The study area in which this methodology has been applied is Piemonte, with a total of 50 flow measurements series. With this large amount of discharge data it is possible to test a multi-site calibration approach. The results show that the use of only one measure for calibration highlight some shortcomings in the validation results, while the use of all the measures together improve model performance in all catchments levels.