Methodology for the parametrization and semi-distributed hydrological modeling of instantaneous peak flow and their translation to hydraulic exploitation sites

Abstract

The design peak flow determination of a hydraulic work is conditioned by the hydrometric and pluviographic information available and the physiographic characteristics of the basin under study. The use of empirical hydrological models implies significant uncertainty if it is considered that the design storm's return period differs from the design flood's return period. When downstream hydrometric data is available, transferring the maximum runoff to the project site is necessary. For this procedure, areas, rainfall volumes, or runoff coefficients are commonly used; however, these procedures are invalid when important tributaries are incorporated between the study sites. Therefore, a semi-distributed conceptual methodology is proposed to simulate maximum average daily hydrographs in the present work. The model, complemented with a parameterization of peak flows from average daily flows, allows the transfer of maximum annual floods from a hydrometric station to the site of a hydraulic project. The determination of a potential flow associated with each Thiessen polygon was conceptualized. For the hydrological modeling and translation of the maximum daily mean hydrographs. The potential flow was defined from the rainfall volume and the weighted average delay time of the sub-basins that coincide in each polygon. The preceding made it possible to relate the geospatial influence that precipitation records have on the production of runoff volumes with estimating the hydraulic conduction time of the different coincident channels.