Development of HEC-HMS Model for Flow Simulation at Dungun River Basin Malaysia

Abstract

The uncertainty in climate can result in droughts, extreme floods and an imbalance in agriculture, natural resources and ecosystem. Special attention should be given to operations management, reservoirs and water catchment to address water-related issues arising from climate change. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a rainfall-runoff model and to assess the runoff potential for the catchment, to calibrate and validate the model, and to use the calibrated values for future hydrological research. The Hydrological Modelling System (HEC-HMS) is used to simulate rainfall-runoff processed in the watershed. The rainfall data for this study were obtained from the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) Malaysia, covering from the year 2007 to 2018. There are three rainfall gauging stations and one stream-flow data stations in the study area. The rainfall-runoff simulation has been conducted using different data set for calibration and validation. Preliminary data shows that there is a clear difference between the observed and simulated peak flows. Model calibrations with the optimization process and sensitivity analysis were performed to obtain the optimal parameters for this watershed. The values of the parameters obtained and model validation using optimized parameter values from the calibration curve show a reasonable difference in peak flow. Generally the results of the study showed a good simulation between observed and estimated value with NSE = 0.85, R² = 0.86, relative error peak = -4.14% and relative error volume = -22.5%. This study intended to help managers of the river basin and related agencies to forecast and analyze management options for conducting planning and potential measures of the river basin.