Int. J. of Sustainable Water and Environmental Systems
Volume 9, No. 1 (2017) pp. 21-27
Calibration and Validation Of Swat For Sub-Hourly Time Steps Using
Swat-Cup
Sa’d Shannak*
Postdoctoral Researcher, Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Texas A&M AgriLife, Dallas, Texas
Abstract
SWAT is a semi-distributed, lumped parameter, continuous time model that simulates hydrology and water quality in
watersheds. Traditionally, the model operated at a daily time step and it estimated the influence of landuse and
management practices on water and agricultural chemical yields in a watershed. The daily time step format may not be
sufficient to capture the impact of flashy storms where peak flows last for minutes only and are not reflected in daily
average flows. A sub-hourly SWAT model for urban applications was developed but is not widely used. The main goal of
this study was to present a basic methodology to calibrate sub-hourly SWAT models using SWAT-CUP. SWAT was
tested using data from the Blunn Creek Watershed in Austin, Texas. The model was calibrated and evaluated using two
separate representative 2-year periods bracketing hydrologic conditions experienced in the watershed. Results show that
the sub-hourly SWAT provides reasonable estimates of stream flow for multiple storm events.
Keywords: Sub-hourly, SWAT, SWAT-CUP, SUFI-2, Uncertainty, Hydrological Modelling
1. Introduction
SWAT (Soil & Water Assessment Tool) is a river basin
scale model developed to quantify the impact of land
management practices in large, complex watersheds [1]. Since
SWAT is a distributed hydrological model, there are potentially
many parameters that can affect the stream flow assessment.
Investigating the potential impact of all these parameters can
be a very difficult task due to the high number of input
parameters at one of several different levels of detail:
watershed, subbasin, or HRU and which also highly interlinked
and interdependent on each other. Most of the available SWAT
studies use a daily time step format to assess hydrological
changes. [2,3,4]. A sub-hourly time step was developed and
released in 2010 [5]. The intention was to increase accuracy in
modeling single storm events, peak flows and provide essential
hydrologic metrics that maybe important predictors of stream
health and in studying the impact of low impact development.
A sub-hourly time step format accounts for high temporal
resolution that is needed in urban scenario analysis including
controlling for stormwater runoff, reducing potential flooding
and providing healthy environment for aquatic life. On the
other hand, sub-hourly time step model results in a more
complex model since it accounts for more details than daily or
monthly time steps, thus making the calibration-validation
process more complicated. The complexity of modern
hydrologic models requires narrowing model parameters down
to just those that have the greatest influence on the processes
being modeled. Sensitivity analysis is one method used before
the calibration process in order to study the variability in model
outputs with respect to changes in individual model
parameters. This type of analysis is considered essential in
order to determine the parameters that should be included in
the calibration process [6]. These methods also assist in
facilitating model evaluation in terms of the accuracy of the fit
of simulated data to measured or historical data using several
combinations of input parameters.
Most hydrological models must be calibrated so their
predictions can be used for tasks ranging from regulation to
research [7]. Distributed hydrological models often incorporate
inputs from numerous sources including weather, soils, land
use, surface water, groundwater and management practices.
Manual calibration depends heavily on the modeler adjusting
model parameters until the output match closely the measure
data. This can be difficult and time-consuming process due to
the complexity of some large scale models with many
objectives and the numerous interactions between these
objectives [8]
The process of calibration entails testing a model’s ability to
accurately simulate the behavior of the system of interest using
known inputs and uncertain parameters, and comparing the
outputs to observed data [7]. These parameters can be
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail: sshannok@tamu.edu
© 2017 International Association for Sharing Knowledge and Sustainability.
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