An integrated hydrometeorological system for flow forecasting has been
designed and implemented for real-time use in an operational environm
ent at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Rock Island District, Illinois
. The system operates routinely with data collected by real-time data-
collection platforms and stored in a real-time database. Forecasts are
based on coupled hydrological and meteorological models, and a state
estimator that updates system states in real time using all current da
ta. Five soil-water models are used to estimate rainfall abstractions:
a generic API model, the modified Sacramento soil moisture accounting
model, and three soil-water options in the HEC-1 model. Initial sensi
tivity analysis of the short-term system forecasts with respect to the
soil-water model and the state-updating components indicates robust s
ystem behavior in short-term real-time flow prediction. In addition, s
ensitivity analysis shows that when updating is performed using all av
ailable operational data, the differences in results among soil-water
models are small. Thus, selection of a soil-water model to estimate hy
drologic abstractions may be based on user familiarity with a certain
model and the estimation of its parameters.