ABSTRACT
Hydrodynamic models play a crucial role in water management. Nevertheless, the use of detailed models is infeasible for some applications because of their long calculation times. For such applications, models are required that describe the state of the river accurately, but at a fraction of the computation time of full hydrodynamic models. This research presents a grey-box conceptual modelling methodology for rivers that meets these criteria. An accompanying software tool was developed to facilitate the model construction. The presented methodology and software are demonstrated by modelling the Marke River in Belgium based on simulation results of a detailed hydrodynamic model that solves the full de Saint-Venant equations. The conceptual model simulates events more than 300 times faster than the detailed model and has accurate results. The suggested conceptual model structures allow for many applications, including Real Time Control (RTC), uncertainty analyses, flood management investigations and flood mapping.
