Zhang Zhuo
State Key Laboratory of Climate System Prediction and Risk Management, School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China.
Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):22124. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-06387-x.
Hydrological models are an effective tool for the estimation of peak floods and runoff in planning water development and flood mitigation/adaptation. Continuous hydrologic modeling can determine the relationships between hydrologic processes and environmental changes over long time periods. Therefore, the selection of a theoretically robust and functionally reliable hydrological model is crucial for the effective management of flood risk within a basin. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is one of the most widely used hydrological models for assessing the impacts of climate change on discharge in large basins. In contrast, the Hydrologic Engineering Centers' Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) has been one of the most rapidly evolving and promising hydrological models, with its latest version (v4.9) supporting both fully distributed and semidistributed hydrological modeling approaches. This study was conducted to compare the performances of SWAT and HEC-HMS in long-term continuous simulations in the Pearl River Basin, which is the second largest river basin in terms of discharge in China. For purposes of comparison, both models employed identical input data and comparable configurations. The results demonstrate that both models are capable of predicting river discharge at designated station satisfactories, with the Nash-Sutciffe coefficient exceeding 0.7. Benefiting from its elaborate use of the modified Soil Conservation Service (SCS) loss model and more advanced automatic calibration program, SWAT obtained more accurate results than HEC-HMS in the validation period. However, HEC-HMS is distinguished by its customizable options for constructing hydrological models, and it exhibits considerable potential for application in large-scale river basins such as the Pearl River Basin, enabling long-term, continuous hydrological simulations.
水文模型是规划水资源开发以及洪水缓解/适应措施时估算洪峰流量和径流的有效工具。连续水文建模可以确定长期内水文过程与环境变化之间的关系。因此，选择一个理论上可靠且功能上可信的水文模型对于流域内洪水风险的有效管理至关重要。土壤与水资源评估工具（SWAT）是评估气候变化对大流域流量影响时最广泛使用的水文模型之一。相比之下，水文工程中心的水文建模系统（HEC-HMS）一直是发展最为迅速且前景广阔的水文模型之一，其最新版本（v4.9）支持完全分布式和半分布式水文建模方法。本研究旨在比较SWAT和HEC-HMS在中国流量第二大的流域——珠江流域进行长期连续模拟时的性能。为便于比较，两个模型采用了相同的输入数据和可比的配置。结果表明，两个模型都能够令人满意地预测指定站点的河流流量，纳什-萨特克利夫系数超过0.7。得益于对修正后的土壤保持服务（SCS）损失模型的精心运用以及更先进的自动校准程序，SWAT在验证期内获得了比HEC-HMS更准确的结果。然而，HEC-HMS的特点在于其构建水文模型的可定制选项，并且在珠江流域等大型流域的应用中展现出巨大潜力，能够进行长期、连续的水文模拟。
