Flood forecasting in Jhelum river basin using integrated hydrological and hydraulic modeling approach with a real-time updating procedure

Flood forecasting using hydrological and hydraulic models is an efficient non-structural flood management option. This paper presents a real-time flood forecasting approach for the data-scarce Jhelum basin, using MIKE 11 Nedbor-Afstromings Model (NAM), hydrodynamic (HD), and flood forecasting (FF) models. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) model-forecasted precipitation and temperature data were used to forecast floods and increase the forecast lead time. The model performance was evaluated using the Coefficient of Determination (R 2 ), Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) and indicators of agreement between the simulated values and the observed values. These indicators show good consistency between the observed and simulated hydrographs for the calibration and validation periods, resulting in a level of reliability sufficient for flood forecasting purposes. Errors in forecasting were corrected using an automatic updating routine MIKE 11 FF with the ECMWF input. The forecast results were acceptable for lead times up to 7-days. The study concluded that the developed model was effective for flood forecasting in the data-scarce, snow-dominated Jhelum basin, and that it might be extended to other similar basins throughout the world as part of an early flood warning system.