A Physically‐Based Reverse‐Stage Routing Model Considering Lateral Flow for Establishing Normal Rating Curves at Ungauged Upstream River Sections

Abstract

The development of water resource projects of a river often requires information on stage and discharge to design hydraulic control structures at desired locations across the river. However, the rivers of many countries are often ungauged or poorly gauged due to inadequate streamflow monitoring networks. Even with the available limited monitoring stations, only a few of them monitor both stage and discharge data. To arrive at this information at the desired locations along a river, one may estimate this information by transferring the related information from nearby monitored gauging stations.Generally, a river reach is termed ungauged if the discharge measurements are unavailable, even if the associated stage information is available (Hrachowitz et al., 2013). As a limited number of stations are gauged along the rivers, conventionally, the downstream stage and discharge hydrographs are estimated by the forward routing models with the known upstream stage or discharge hydrographs. There are many river basins worldwide