Rainfall-flow Modeling Using a Global Conceptual Model: Case of the Beni Bahdel Watershed (Northwest of Algeria)

Abstract

Rainfall-flow modeling remains necessary, even essential, to understand the dynamics of a watershed and to solve problems related to the disruption of hydrological regimes. It has been proven effective by providing solutions to many water-related problems, such as sizing and management of structures, and flood forecasting. Global hydrological models can simulate the transformation of rainfall data into flows on natural basins for many practical applications in the field of water resource management. Our study aims to evaluate the reliability of one of these models, that of Rural Engineering 'GR' at three time steps: annual (GR1A), monthly (GR2M), and daily (GR4J), which will be applied to the Beni Bahdel watershed with an area of 1040 km², one of the sub-basins of Northwestern Algeria. The input parameters are precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET), and the output parameters are flows. The results obtained, both in calibration and validations, are encouraging, where the evaluation criteria taken into consideration, namely the Nash criterion and the correlation coefficient, exceeded 70% and 0.80 respectively. The study could be a decision-making tool for the simulation of flows, and be very useful for future hydraulic developments in the study area.