A Comparative Approach for Rainfall Runoff Modeling

In Ethiopia, there are large numbers of modeling works have been conducted in different basins under different climate, land use, soil, geology etc. The applied models have different structure to simulate discharge. Their ability in simulating discharge in a comparison approach has not yet been explored. So conducting comparative analysis( HBV light vs SWAT ) and identifying of models which represent realistic simulation is important for proper development and management of water resource for the catchment. During calibration period of each model, the optimized parameters which give good performance result for HBV were Reff= 0.71, NSE= 0.70 and during validation is 0.71 and 0.70 respectively. And for SWAT model R2 = 0.81 and NSE=0.73 for calibration and R2 = 0.72 , NSE=0.71 for validation period. These results indicate that applying SWAT model could be effective in simulation of runoff for sustainable water resources management and development in the watershed runoff by considering sensitivity, model performance, parameter identification and uncertainty analysis.