Coupled Hydraulic and Kalman Filter Model for Real-Time Correction of Flood Forecast in the Three Gorges Interzone of Yangtze River, China

Abstract

The Three Gorges Project along the Yangtze River in China, as one of the biggest hydropower-complex projects in the world, plays a significant role in the economic development of the area even of the whole nation. An accurate and reliable flood forecast modeling system is of significant importance for flood control, flood warning, and operation of larger reservoirs. Kalman filter coupling with hydrological models or hydraulic models is one of the efficient methods to adjust real-time flood series for reducing errors from model structure, input data, and calibrated parameters. However, the coupling model is time consuming in computation because the state vectors in this kind of Kalman filter including both water stage and discharge are solved simultaneously. In this study, an alternative coupling method was developed, which separates system state equations and measurement equations allowing the water stage and discharge to be computed alternately. The new method was applied for real-time flood forecasting in the Three Gorges interzone of Yangtze River. The hydraulic model is calibrated and verified against the observed flood stage and discharge before and during Three Gorges Dam construction periods. Study results demonstrate that the new model is efficient in real-time flood forecasting. A comparative study shows that the newly developed approach outperforms the conventional methods in terms of modeling efficiency, root mean square error, as well as the forecasting errors in the maximum water stage and peak flow.