My Past Research on Physico-Statistical Modelling of the Water Cycle at Basin Scale

While GEOtop [J24, J25] is for process-based modelling of the mass and energy budgets at a small scale, in order to model larger catchments, which include abstraction works or hydraulic structures, it was decided to implement a new modelling system JGrass-NewAGE [J34].  This system sacrifices process details in favour of  efficient calculations.  It is made of components apt at returning statistical hydrological quantities, opportunely averaged in time and space.  One of the goals of this implementation effort was to create the basis for a physico-statistical hydrology in which the hydrological spatially distributed dynamics is reduced into low dimensional components, when necessary surrogating the internal heterogeneities with "suitable noise" and a probabilistic description.

Unlike other efforts of synthesis, JGrass-NewAge wants to keep the spatial description explicit, at various degrees of simplicity.  This has been made possible by opportune processing of distributed information which, in this way, has become part of the model itself.
From the point of view of the information technology used to implement the modelling  [J41, A44, A49, A50], the system is based on the OMS v 3 system, which allows the use of modern, object-oriented strategies for the structuring of the deployment of the software and, at the same time, furnishing not a model, but various, interchangeable, modeling solutions (MS) that can be adapted to the problems in hand and the practical demands of the problem being solved.
The modeling system, as well as the components to model the physical processes themselves, also includes various tools for the processing of input data (for example, Kriging tools), including all the tools of the Horton Machine [eb3] for the processing of digital terrain data, and the tools for the treatment and interpretation of the output data, for the calibration of model parameters, and (in perspective) for continuous data assimilation.
With this in mind, an effort that is currently being made is that of creating an opportune digital watershed scheme that can accommodate the needs of the various modeling conceptualizations and the identification of areas that are hydrologically "similar" that can be treated conjointly during the calculation of flows and storage. At the moment, model solutions use standard implementations.  [J34, J41, A50] contains the description of the rainfall-runoff part of the modelling system; [J43] is a verification of the radiation budgets components; [J44] is an example of simplified snow modelling.  As a standard, any components is verified by itself against the data relative to the process that it describes, using various automatic calibration procedures, and quantitative objective functions. [J34, J41] using the infrastructure show how increased geomorphological (and processes) information affects the quality of reproduction of the hydrologic response. [j44] explains the watershed partition, based on a generalisation of the Pfafstetter numbering scheme, that guide the functioning of the JGrass-NewAGE system.

References 

In English:

[J24] - Rigon R., Bertoldi G e T. M. Over, GEOtop: A distributed hydrological model with coupled water and energy budgets, Vol. 7, No. 3, pages 371-388

[J25] Bertoldi G. R. Rigon e T. M. Over, Impact of watershed geomorphic char- acteristics on the energy and water budgets, Vol. 7, No. 3, pages 389-394, 2006

[J34] - Formetta, G.; Mantilla, R.; Franceschi, S., Antonello A., Rigon R., The JGrass- NewAge system for forecasting and managing the hydrological budgets at the basin scale: models of flow generation and propagation/routing, Geoscientific Model Development Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 943-955, DOI: 10.5194/gmd-4- 943-201, 2011

[A49] Formetta G., Antonello A., Franceschi S., David O. and Rigon R., The informatics of the hydrological modelling system JGrass-NewAge, 2012 International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software Managing Resources of a Limited Planet, Sixth Biennial Meeting, Leipzig, Germany R. Seppelt, A.A. Voinov, S. Lange, D. Bankamp (Eds.) http://www.iemss.org/society/index.php/iemss- 2012-proceedings, 2012

[j36] - Formetta G., Rigon R., Chavez J.L., David O., The short wave radiation model in JGrass-NewAge System, Geosci. Model Dev., 6, 915-928, 2013, www.geosci-model-dev.net/6/915/2013/
doi:10.5194/gmd-6-915-2013

[J39] - Formetta G., Antonello A., Franceschi S., David O., and Rigon R., Hydrological modelling with components: A GIS-based open-source framework, Environmental Modelling & Software, 5 (2014), 190-200

[j42] - Formetta G., David O., Kampf S., Rigon R., The Cache la Poudre river basin snow water equivalent modeling with NewAge-JGrass, accepted GMD, 2014

[j44] Formetta G. , Antonello A. , Franceschi S. , David O., Rigon R.,  Digital watershed representation within the NewAge-JGrass system. Boletin Geologico y Minero, 125 (3): 371-381, 2014. ISSN: 0366-0176

In Italian:

[A44] Antonello A., Franceschi S., Formetta G., Rigon R., L’infrastruttura NewAGE per la previsione e la gestione dei bilanci idrici a scala di bacino: I - La struttura informatica, in Atti XXXII Convegno di Idraulica e Costruzioni Idrauliche, Palermo, 14-17 Settembre 2010

[A45] Formetta G., Franceschi S., Antonello A., Cordano E., Mantilla R., Rigon R., Il sistema NewAGE per la previsione e la gestione dei bilanci idrici a scala di bacino. II - I modelli di generazione, aggregazione e propagazione del deflusso. in Atti XXXII Convegno di Idraulica e Costruzioni Idrauliche, Palermo, 14-17 Settembre 2010

[A50] Formetta G., Rigon R, Le nuove componenti modellistiche di JGrass-NewAGE, Atti del XXXIII Convegno di Idraulica e costruzioni Idrauliche, Brescia, 10-15 settembre 2012