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.