A conceptual data model coupling with physically-based distributed hydrological models based on catchment discretization schemas

- A conceptual data model is used to interpret the comprehensive, universal and complex water environmental entities.
- The data model couples with DHMs based on HRUs.
- An innovative integration methodology is used to facilitate seamless data flow fluid and dynamic by HRUs as the core between databases and DHMs.

SummaryIn hydrology, the data types, spatio-temporal scales and formats for physically-based distributed hydrological models and the distributed data or parameters may be different before significant data pre-processing or may change during hydrological simulation run time. A data model is devoted to these problems for sophisticated numerical hydrological modeling procedures. In this paper, we propose a conceptual data model to interpret the comprehensive, universal and complex water environmental entities. We also present an innovative integration methodology to couple the data model with physically-based distributed hydrological models (DHMs) based on catchment discretization schemas. The data model provides a reasonable framework for researchers of organizing and pre-processing water environmental spatio-temporal datasets. It also facilitates seamless data flow fluid and dynamic by hydrological response units (HRUs) as the core between the object-oriented databases and physically-based distributed hydrological models.