Hydrological modeling using Effective Rainfall routed by the Muskingum method (ERM)

This paper introduces a new rainfall runoff model called ERM (Effective Rainfall routed by Muskingum method), which has been developed based on the popular IHACRES model. The IHACRES model consists of two main components to transfer rainfall to effective rainfall and then to streamflow. The second component of the IHACRES model is a linear unit hydrograph which has been replaced by the classic and well-known Muskingum method in the ERM model. With the effective rainfall by the first component of the IHACRES model, the Muskingum method is used to estimate the quick flow and slow flow separately. Two different sets of input data (temperature or evapotranspiration, rainfall and observed streamflow) and genetic algorithm (GA) as an optimization scheme have been selected to compare the performance of IHACRES and ERM models in calibration and validation. By testing the models in three different catchments, it is found that the ERM model has better performance over the IHACRES model across all three catchments in both calibration and validation. Further studies are needed to apply the ERM on a wide range of catchments to find its strengths and weaknesses.