Flood investigation in the upper Ping river basin using mathematical models

The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of two public domain models the IHACRES (rainfall-runoff model) and the FLDWAV (hydrodynamic model) using the upper Ping River basin as the study area. Rainfall, runoff and meteorological data on a daily basis were used for model calibration and verification. IHACRES was used to estimate ungauged flows for three subcatchments along the study reach between stations P.75 and P.73 of the Ping River, which were used subsequently as input data for FLDWAV. The IHACRES model parameters used for ungauged flood estimation of the three sub-catchments were calibrated at their neighboring gauging stations P.20, P.76 and P.77. IHACRES was able to produce flood hydrographs close to the observed values at these three stations. The calibrated IHACRES model parameters were later used for flood estimation for three ungauged catchments and three selected flood events in 2001, 2003 and 2004, which were used subsequently as input data for FLDWAV. For the three selected flood events, FLDWAV was effective in estimating flood hydrographs that were also close to the observed values at all three stations P.67, P.1 and P.73 located along the Ping River. Even though they may not be as easy to use as some commercial models, these two public domain models are quite flexible and can be used in many circumstances and produce reasonable results that are as accurate as other commercial and non-commercial models.