FRIEND-IAHS prediction in ungauged basins

Sub-Project

The study will focus on the prediction of low flow and drought characteristics at the ungauged site, including an adequate estimation of the uncertainty. The study will be linked to the IAHS-PUB (Prediction in Ungauged Basins) initiative.

The objectives are: (1) identification of a number of study areas with long time series of hydrometeorological data for low streamflow and hydrological drought prediction around the world, to collate data, and create a database, (2) development and evaluation of stochastic and deterministic methods for predicting low streamflow and hydrological drought characteristics at ungauged river sites within the study regions, and (3) identification of gaps in our understanding and characterization of low streamflow and hydrological drought processes (e.g. hydrogeological characterization), and advance our current methods and estimation tools to improve low streamflow and drought prediction at ungauged river sites.

A academic book on Runoff Prediction in Ungauged Basins - a Benchmark Assessment is being compiled as a joint effort of the FRIEND and IAHS communities. The book summarises the state of hydrological predictions for ungauged basins with various runoff signatures. Members of the EURO-FRIEND Low Flow and Drought group contribute to one chapter on low flow estimation. At the FRIEND Conference in Fez (Morrocco, October 2010) two major European benchmark studies from the PUB Benchmark Assessment Report on low flow regionalisation are presented. In each study, several competing methods are compared by cross-validation to shed light on the performance of different methods for predicting low flows in ungauged basins. The chapter on low flows is an example of how UNESCO-FRIEND has stimulated international cooperation and has established links with a related international programme (i.e. IAHS-PUB) to help gain knowledge and exchange best practise.

Participants of 1st FRIEND-IAHS PUB working group
Low Streamflow and Hydrologic Drought, Vienna, Austria, April 2007

© 2016 EURO-FRIEND

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