Daily reservoir inflow forecasting using weather forecast downscaling and rainfall-runoff modeling: Application to Urmia Lake basin, Iran

This study develops the first daily runoff forecast system for Bukan reservoir in Urmia Lake basin (ULB), Iran, a region suffering from water shortages and competing water demands. A weather forecast downscaling model is developed for downscaling large-scale raw weather forecasts of ECMWF and NCEP to small-scale spatial resolutions. Various downscaling methods are compared, including deterministic Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN). Downscaled precipitation and temperature forecasts are then fed into a rainfall-runoff model that accounts for daily snow and soil moisture dynamics in the sub-basins upstream of Bukan reservoir. The multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) method is used to estimate hydrological model parameters by maximizing the simulation accuracy of observed river flow (NSEQ) and the logarithm of river flow (NSELogQ) in each sub-basin. Results of the weather forecast downscaling model show that the accuracy of the BBN is greater than the various deterministic AI methods tested. Calibration results of the rainfall-runoff model indicate no significant trade-off between fitting daily high and low flows, with an average NSEQ and NSELogQ of 0.43 and 0.63 for the calibration period, and 0.54 and 0.57 for the validation period. The entire forecasting system was evaluated using inflow observations for years 2020 and 2021, resulting in an NSE of 0.66 for forecasting daily inflow into Bukan reservoir. The inflow forecasts can be used by policymakers and operators of the reservoir to optimize water allocation between agricultural and environmental demands in the ULB. [Display omitted] •First real-time daily runoff forecast system in Urmia Lake basin.•Comparison of AI and BBN methods for downscaling seasonal weather forecasts.•Probabilistic BBN outperforms AI methods for downscaling precipitation forecasts.•New rainfall-runoff model for the region accounts for daily snow and soil moisture.