Selection of Calibration Events for Modelling Green Urban Drainage

Abstract

Urban drainage models are often calibrated using a limited number of rainfall-runoff events, which may be selected in different ways from a longer observation series. This paper compares 13 different single- and two-stage strategies for selecting events used to calibrate a SWMM model of a predominantly green urban area. Most led to successful calibration, but performance varied for various validation events. Most selection strategies were insensitive to the choice of Nash-Sutcliffe Model Efficiency or Root Mean Squared Error as the objective function. Calibrating impervious and green area parameters separately in two-stage strategies can help improve prediction of low-flow events in validation.