Long-term runoff forecasting by combining hydrological models and meteorological records

Reservoir operation is generally based on the inflows of the upstream catchment of the reservoir. If the arriving inflows can be forecasted, that can benefit reservoir operation and management. This study attempts to construct a long-term inflow-forecasting model by combining a continuous rainfall-runoff model with the long-term weather outlook from the Central Weather Bureau of Taiwan. The analytical results demonstrate that the continuous rainfall-runoff model has good inflow simulation performance by using 10-day meteorological and inflow records over a 33-year period for model calibration and verification. The long-term inflow forecasting during the dry season was further conducted by combining the continuous rainfall-runoff model and the long-term weather outlook, which was found to have good performance.