Proceedings of the 19th IAHR-APD Congress 2014, Hanoi, Vietnam

ISBN 978604821338-1

APPLICATION OF THE DETERMINISTIC HYDROLOGICAL MODEL FOR LARGE CATCHMENT

CASE STUDY AT VU GIA-THU BON CATCHMENT - VIET NAM.

VO NGOC DUONG(1), PHILIPPE GOURBESVILLE(2)

(1)Nice Sophia Antipolis University, Polytech Nice Sophia, Innovative City lab URE 005,vo.ngoc.duong@etu.unice.fr

(2)Nice Sophia Antipolis University, Polytech Nice Sophia, Innovative City lab URE 005, gourbes@unice.fr

ABSTRACT
In order to create a tool to help hydrologists and authorities having good understandings about happenings in stream
flow regime and its variation in the future under the impact of climate change in Vu Gia Thu Bon catchment, a
deterministic hydrological model MIKE SHE from DHI- is constructed. The model covers the major processes in
hydrologic cycle and includes process models for evapo transpiration, overland flow, unsaturated flow, groundwater
flow, channel flow, and their interactions. Each of these processes can be represented at different levels of spatial
distribution and complexity, according to the goals of the modeling study, the availability of field data and the
modeler's choices. This model is calibrated and validated against the daily data in period 1991-2000 and 2001-2010,
respectively. The performance of model are showed by good statistical coefficients at seven gauging stations. The Nash
Sutcliffe and relation coefficients could reach to 0.78 to 0.82 and 0.89 to 0.92, respectively when comparing the discharge.
With the water level, because the limitation of resolution, these coefficients are lower than comparing with the
discharge. However, these are still high in upstream when The Nash Sutcliffe and relation coefficients could reach to
0.63 to 0.77 and 0.81 to 0.89, respectively. This study is confirmed again the performance of deterministic distributed
model in simulating the hydrological process and the capacity of this kind of model to projected climate change, at least
confirm the usefulness of this model with ungagged catchment or large catchment. This study also prove the role of
multi calibration in increasing the accuracy of hydrological model for a large catchment.

Keywords: Deterministic hydrological modeling, sensitivity, multi-calibrate, long-term simulations, Vu Gia Thu Bon catchment.

1. INTRODUCTION as conceptual and physical based, and according to the

spatial description of catchment processes as lumped and
The water is seen the premier constitutive factor of
distributed (Refsgaard, 1996). Each of them has
human being. Thus, it always plays an important role to
advantages and inconveniences for simulating the
the development of human society. However, water
hydrological process. Lumped models are one of simple
distribution is not equal due to time and space. These
hydrological model which assume that all characteristics
unbalances conduct many negative impacts to the
are constant across the catchment (Chow, 1972) such as
human. Annually, natural disaster related on water issue
HBV model, MIKE11/ NAM Model, Tank, Topmodel,
such as flood, drought, stormbring out lots of severe
Xinanjiang. Lumper parameter models are much simpler
damages. These are not only on the property but also on
in their treatment of spatial variation, which each model
the life. According to IPCC (2007) in recent years, under
parameter described by a value that is uniform for the
the impact of climate change, the consequences of flood,
whole catchment so these could not be determined
drought catastrophes are more serious. Getting the deep
directly from physical characteristics of the catchment
knowledge on the hydrological factors in a catchment is
under consideration. These parameters are generally
an essential objective of hydrologist community to be
determined via calibration (Chow, 1972, Madsen, 2003).
able to transform disadvantages to advantages or
In contrast, distributed model is constructed on dividing
mitigate the natural catastrophic damage to people.
catchment into sub units which each unit represents all
Nowadays, with the development of mathematics and
physical characteristics for a real area. These kinds of
computer science, the simulating the hydrological cycle
models maintain the physical details at a given grid size
for catchment becomes easier and more accurate. These
and consider the distributed nature of hydrological
progressions help hydrologists might have concrete and
properties such as soil type, slope and land use
truthful insights about what happens in hydrology to
(Refsgaard, 1997, Vansteenkiste et al, 2013). In principle,
make good decisions for reducing natural hazards on the
parameters of distributed model could be gotten from the
catchment (Cunge, 2003).
catchment data. For this reason, distributed model is
Up to date, many hydrological models have been evaluated to be able to translate more accurately and
developed with different theories to simulated concretely the hydrologic process in a catchment. One
catchments hydrological phenomenon. They may be more advantage of distributed model is that the outputs
classified according to the description of physical process such as water level, discharge, hydrological factors could

1
be perfectly extracted at anywhere in the catchment.
These efficiencies help to overcome difficulties in lack of
observed data, which have a great significance for
simulating the hydrological process at a large catchment
or in developing countries. However, which model is the
best to simulate hydrological process? Until now this
question has not been clearly answered yet. There are
some arguments on the advantage and limitation of this
both kind of model. Even if distributed model have
drawbacks on computation time, initial parameter
definition or lack of spatial data for set up model as well
as validation (Parkin, 1996, Bormann et al, 2009, Benven,
2011), most of modelers estimate highly the capacity of
distributed model than lumped model. The lumped
models, in many case, perform just as well as distributed
models with regard to rainfall runoff simulation when
sufficient calibration data exist. (Michaud and
Sorooshian, 1994, Refsgaard and Knudsen, 1996).
Conversely, the distributed model could not prove
completely its performance in simulating the
hydrological factor. Because the spatial input data such as
topography, soil type, land use nowadays might be
available to build the model, but it is really not easy to
find the spatial data for calibration or validation (Beven,
1996). This leads to quality estimation of the model in the
whole catchment is mostly unable, the calibration and
validation are generally carried out against the data at
several gauging stations. One more weak point of
distributed models is that this model type commonly
consists of more parameters than lumped models so the
calibrated process is more complicated and difficult to
achieve the acceptable values (Reed, 2004). However,
Refsgaard, 1997 noted that more detailed physically base
and spatially distributed models are assumed to give a
detailed and potentially more correct description of the
hydrological process in the catchment whereby might
provide more accurate predictions. From these
preeminences, many distributed models have been
developed and applied in recent years such as MIKE
SHE, SWAT, SWIM, LISFLOOD and WETSPA.
The Vu Gia Thu Bon is one of the large catchment located
at central of Viet Nam where annually confronts with
severe damages due to natural disasters such as flood,
drought catastrophe. Furthermore, according to the
prediction of IPCC's scenario (IPCC, 2007), under the
impact of global warming, sea level increase, the change
in hydrological cycle, flood and drought disaster,
abnormal phenomena e.g phenomena El Nino and La
Nina in Vu Gia Thu Bon basin are forecasted to be going
to happen more frequently and more extremely. It makes
the consequences of natural disasters to people,
livelihood, social economic development are more severe.
Hence, in order to mitigate the impact of these
catastrophes to human being, it is necessary to have an
efficient tool to help hydrologists and authorities having
good understandings about happenings in stream flow
regime and its variation in the future under the impact of
climate change . For this purpose, a fully deterministic
hydrological model MIKE SHE model from DHI- is
chosen to simulate the hydrological process in Vu Gia
Thu Bon catchment. The objective of this paper is to (1)
confirm the performance of distributed model type to
simulate the hydrological process and capacity to
translate climate scenario, at least the advantage of this
model towards large catchment and ungauged area (2)
evaluate the sensitivity of model parameters and (3)
compare the calibrated efficiency of multi-site versus
single-site (4) analyze the uncertainty of input data and
model structure.
2. VU GIA THU BON CATCHMENT
The Vu Gia Thu Bon, which originates on the eastern side
of the Truong Son mountain range and drains to the
ocean near the cities of Da Nang and Hoi An, is the
biggest river system of the coastal province in the central
region of Viet Nam. This system has two main rivers, the
Vu Gia and Thu Bon rivers, which flow through many
complex topographies: the relatively narrow
mountainous area with a maximum elevation of 2600m at
Ngoc Linh mountain which, features a large number of
steep tributaries, and the flat coastal zone at the
downstream, prone to annual flooding consisting of a
complex interconnected coastal river system. This system
is located at a tropical monsoon climate region where
weather phenomena, such as rain and storm happen
complicatedly. With the typical characteristic of the
region, the climate pattern in Vu Gia Thu Bon basin is
influenced by Truong Son mountain in western with a
quite high rainfall. The average annual rainfall of this
area is from 2000 mm to 4000 mm. However, it differs in
season, 65 % to 80 % of the annual rainfall drops during
the period of September December. The precipitation
has shown increasing trends from north to south and
from low to high elevation area. Moreover, this region is
annually attacked by 2-4 typhoons that bring huge
rainfall and whirlwind (RETA 6470, 2011, To, 2005). It
makes inundation disaster happen frequently more
seriously. On the contrary, drought frequently occurs in
the remaining months. Despite these complicated climate
conditions, the hydrological infrastructure in the basin is
still underdeveloped. The density of measuring stations is
sparse, especially the rain and flow gauge stations in
tributaries. Although this area covers around 10350 km 2,
it has only fifteen stations (Figure 1) that record rainfall
data. Lack of data and data quality bring certain
difficulties in forecasting natural phenomenon in current
time as well as in future.
Figure 1. Vu Gia Thu Bon catchment in central Viet Nam, and
hydro meteorological network.
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Due to the violence of climatological events, the fragile
economic condition and the underdeveloped
infrastructure, the natural disasters related to river flow
deeply affect the population in this region. In addition,
the farming habits formed agricultural production and
cultural customs also influence negatively on the
prevention of inhabitants against natural catastrophes.
Furthermore, local authorities although have made
efforts to prepare for these disasters and to overcome the
damage, these works seem still insufficient. They have
not yet had a complete strategy to help population avoid
the catastrophic effects. Consequently, the population in
central Vietnam, especially in Vu Gia Thu Bon basin,
annually sustains considerable damages to people and
property.
3. METHODOLOGY
3.1 Deterministic distributed hydrological model
In many current hydrological models, deterministic
distributed model is likely to have more advantages. The
main interest of a deterministic distributed hydrological
model is to be able to provide hydrological data at any
locations within the catchment. This possibility allows to
investigate, in depth the hydrological dynamic. Several
tools are today available and could be used for such
analysis. The typical model is MIKE SHE developed and
extended by DHI Water & Environment since the last
decades of the 20st century. MIKE SHE covers the major
processes in hydrologic cycle and includes process
models for evapo transpiration, overland flow,
unsaturated flow, groundwater flow, channel flow, and
their interactions. Each of these processes can be
represented at different levels of spatial distribution and
complexity, according to goals of the modeling study, the
availability of field data and the modeler's choices (Butts
et al, 2004). The representation of catchment
characteristics and input data is provided through the
discretization of the catchment horizontally into an
orthogonal network of grid squares. In this way spatial
variability in parameters such as elevation, soil type (soil
hydraulic parameters), land cover, precipitation and
potential evapo-transpiration can be represented. Within
each grid square, the vertical variations in soil and hydro
geological characteristics are described in a number of
horizontal layers with variable depths. Lateral flow
between grid squares occurs as either overland flow or
subsurface saturated zone flow. The one-dimensional
Richards' equation employed for the unsaturated zone
assumes that horizontal flow is negligible compared to
vertical flow (Thompson et al, 2004). With its
performance, MIKE SHE has been used in a broad range
of applications. It is being used operationally in many
countries around the world by organizations ranging
from universities and research centers to consulting
engineers companies (Refsgaard and Storm, 1995). MIKE
SHE has been used for the analysis, planning and
management of a wide range of water resources and
environmental and ecological problems related to surface
water and groundwater, such as: River basin
management and planning, Water supply design,
management and optimization, irrigation and drainage,
Soil and water management, groundwater management,
interactive between water surface et ground water,
ecological evaluations flood plain studies, impact of land
use and climate change. Graham and Butts, (2005)
applied the MIKE SHE model to simulate the
hydrological process of Senegal River Basin. This model
was developed on an area 375000 km 2, and included all
of hydrologic components. The result was relatively
preventative of the characteristic of this catchment with
good obtained statistical coefficients. Thomson, et al,
(2004) used this model to simulate the hydrological
system in lowland wet grassland in southeast England.
These authors used MIKE SHE coupling with MIKE 11 to
present the hydrologic factors in Elmley Marshes
catchment during 36 months. This research gave
remarkable results in simulating surface flooding,
groundwater and flow in the channel. The application of
the coupled MIKE SHE/MIKE 11 modelling system to
the Elmley Marshes has demonstrated its potential to
represent complex hydrological systems found within
many wetland environments. By simulating the stream
flow process at catchment (<100 km 2) in China, and at in
Hawaii, USA, the works of Zhang et al, (2008) and
Sahoo et al (2006) already proved the capacity of MIKE
SHE to describe the flow in mountainous region. This
model is likely to be preeminent to simulate hydrology in
semi-arid area with the studies of McMichael et all,
(2006). These strong points of fully deterministic
distributed hydrological model MIKE SHE model are
expected to increase the accuracy when modelling the
river flow in current and could translate better the
climate scenarios in the future.
3.2 Input data and model setup
In order to assess the variation of run off at Vu Gia Thu
Bon catchment happening in the end of this century, a
deterministic hydrological model - MIKE SHE model -
has been built. All modules of MIKE SHE model are used
to be able to describe honestly the hydrological process in
this region and help to reduce the uncertainties when
translating the climate scenario to hydrological model.
Vu Gia Thu Bon is a big river system which plays an
important role with the developing of Da Nang city and
Quang Nam province. Its run off variation affects
significantly the social economy of this area. However,
observed data of this river system are still not sufficient
to give a good simulation. The lack of data is always a big
problem when modelling hydrology in this catchment.
Therefore in this study, the data is collected from
different sources and with the support from many
agencies.
* Topography: The elevation data using in the model is
taken from STRM DEM with the resolution 90 m of
NASA (Figure 1) (http://www.cgiar-csi.org).
* Precipitation: The rainfall which is a key factor in
hydrologic process. Its spatial variation affects heavily on
both runoff generation and hydrologic process in a
catchment (Moon et al., 2004). The spatial variability in
rainfall may introduce significant uncertainty in model
parameter during the calibration process (Chaubey et al.,
1999). While the quality of spatial rainfall distribution
usually depends on the characteristic of the study area
and other factors, in particular, the rain gauge density.
Therefore, the network of rain gauge station in Vu Gia
Thu Bon is sparse, averagely one station observes for an
area 700 km 2. Hence, redistributing spatial rainfall is
necessary. According to the study of Vo and Gourbesville
(2014), the Kriging is the most suitable method to
interpolate the rainfall in this area. This simulation uses
3
the rainfall data which is redistributed spatially based on
daily rainfall data from 15 rain gauge stations with the
Kriging method (cell size 1000 m).
* Evapotranspiration: This data is inherited from the
study of Vu et al (2008).
* Land use and Soil map: The land use and soil data are
provided by researcher of project Land Use and Climate
Change Interaction in Central Viet Nam (LUCCI), and
project Impacts of Climate Change in Mi-Central Viet
Nam (P1-08 VIE). In order to simplify the calibrated
process, the original land use and soil map data is
preliminarily treated by merge from many kinds of soil
and land use to typical types of Vu Gia Thu Bon
Catchment.
Figure 2. Soil map (upper), land use (lower) at Vu Gia Thu Bon
catchment for this study.
* River and lakes: the Vu Gia Thu Bons river network is
so complicated. It flows through different terrain
morphologies, mountain at the western and delta coastal
region at eastern. It is composed from two main rivers,
Vu Gia and Thu Bon rivers which include lots of
tributaries at upstream and linking branches at
downstream. In order to simulate better the river flow,
MIKE SHE model is coupling with a hydrodynamic
MIKE 11 model. This model is developed on 44 big
branches with length varying from 20 km to 202 km. The
geometry of each river branch is specified via cross
section. The cross section applies in this model is from
two sources, few of them at downstream are taken from
the measurements, remaining ones are extracted from the
DEM.
* Overland flow: The overland flow appears after the net
rainfall rate exceeds the infiltration capacity of the soil,
water is ponded on ground surface. The main parameter
supplies MIKE SHE to calculate this flow is
Stickler roughness coefficient M. For Vu Gia Thu Bon,
this parameter is determined depending on Land use
map and in 2 to 90 m 1/3/s (Nguyen Thong, 2005; DHI
2012; Vieux, 2001)
* Unsaturated zone: DHI suggests three methods for
describing the flow in this zone. However, the difference
about accuracy between them is not so high. In this
simulation, the simple two-layer water balance method is
chosen to diminish the computation time. The physical
property of each kind of soil is presented via the water
content at saturation, water content at field capacity,
water content at wilting point, saturated hydraulic
conductivity. Initial values using in this model is
consulted on the work of Do and Nguyen (2000),
Domenico (1998).
* Saturated zone: The groundwater is supplied by Central
Viet Nam Division of Water Resources Planning and
Investigation (http://www.ceviwrpi.gov.vn). The
characteristic of aquifer is mainly presented by
Horizontal hydraulic and vertical hydraulic conductivity
that is taken from the study of Environmental Science
Division (EVS) a Division of Argonne National
Laboratory.
4. SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS, CALIBRATION
AND VALIDATION
In principle, the model parameters of hydrological
distributed model should be assessable from catchment
data (Refshaard et al, 1995). However, simulating for a
large catchment with the input data is not very accurate
as well as the components are simplified. Furthermore,
the input data resolution is still coarse, which affects
significantly on the representation of geology,
topography, soil, vegetation and climate factors into
model. As a result, the model could not represent
precisely the physical property of catchment due to both
these reasons. (Gurtz et al, 1999). These limitation make
reduction on the simulation performance of distributed
model. Consequently, the run off from uncalibrated
model may be different from the measurement. In order
to improve the weakness, the calibration is carried out to
find an optimal set of parameter values that simulate the
behavior of the watershed as accurate as possible.
(Madsen, 2003, Wang et al, 2012). Nevertheless,
Refsgaard and Storm (1995) note that the number of
parameters subject to adjustment during calibration of
MIKE SHE should be kept as small as possible. This issue
is depended so much on the accuracy of initial set up
value of model. For that requirement, the initial value
have to define carefully base on the physical property of
catchment.
4.1 Sensitivity analysis
Calibrating a fully distributed model which consists of
many components and mutually dependent parameters
4
is really difficult, it makes modeler must attach special Saturated hydraulic conductivity 8.5 10-6 m/s
importance to many parameters, even several factors - Light clay
influence insignificantly hydrographs. Hence, the Water content at saturation 0.41
calibration is no need to apply for all parameters. Only Water content at field capacity 0.12
Water content at wilting point 0.04
several parameters, which have important and great
Saturated hydraulic conductivity 2.085 10-4 m/s
effects on the model are chosen. These parameters are
- Sand
decided relying on the results of sensitivity process which Water content at saturation 0.37
is done manually by varying individually the values of Water content at field capacity 0.1
parameters one by one. The sensitivity also quantifies the Water content at wilting point 0.03
dependent rate of runoff on the change of these Saturated hydraulic conductivity 2.89 10-4 m/s
parameters. As a result, these rates conduct the * Saturated zone
calibration to more easily obtain the acceptable value. It is Horizontal hydraulic conductivity 6.7 10-5 m/s
seen a prior step of calibration process. When doing this Vertical hydraulic conductivity 10-4 m/s
work for MIKE SHE model in Vu Gia Thu Bon
catchment, the sensitivity of each parameters is analyzed This big catchment has a complicated river system.
based on the response of discharge in Nong Son and Although the length of two main rivers reaches to 200
Thanh My station. Only few of model parameters are km, there is only one flow measured station in the middle
chosen to calibrate. These are show at the Table 1. of each main river, Nong Son and Thanh My stations.
This situation makes several difficulties in the
4.2 Calibration and validation comparison of the results between simulation and
observation. Especially this is an inconvenient point to
The MIKE SHE model is built in an 11 year period from predict flood risk for downstream region, and also is a
1990 to 2000 for calibration and 2000 to 2010 for factor producing the uncertainty when assessing the
validation. This model simulates on all of the available impact of climate change to river run off. The lack of
components of MIKE SHE model, e.g overland flow, observation data for comparing with the simulation
river and lake, unsaturated flow, evapotranspiration, decline the performance of distributed model. Many
saturated flow to make the model will be able to describe hydrologists have suggested to realize calibration on
the most accurate hydrological cycle in Vu Gia Thu Bon multi-site, with not only against the discharge but also
catchment, as well as to reduce the uncertainty when the water level. Accordingly, The water lever at Ai Nghia
simulating for future scenarios. In other to stabilize the station, Cam Le Station on Vu Gia branch and Hiep Duc,
model and establish proper initial condition for next step, Giao Thuy, Cau Lau stations on Thu Bon branch is as
the first year of each period is used for warming up the well compared in this Mike She model to increase the
model. Hence, in this study, only ten years of daily data confidence of the model and simultaneously reduce
is taken to calibrate and validate. The optimal values uncertainty in projected climate scenario, beside compare
reached from calibrated process are show at Table 1. the discharge at these two stations. The model assessment
Table 1: Calibrated parameter values of MIKE SHE is performed with statistical measures of the root mean
model. squared error (RMSE), the correlation coefficient (R), and
Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (E).
Key parameter Optimal value
* River bed resistance - Strickler Coefficient
- Tributary and upstream of Vu Gia 18 m(1/3)/s (1)
- Tributary and upstream of Thu Bon 25 m(1/3)/s
- Linking branch 30 m(1/3)/s
- Downstream 40 m(1/3)/s
* Overland flow - Strickler Coefficient
- Planted forest 5 m(1/3)/s
- Rural settlement 8 m(1/3)/s
- Rice 16 m(1/3)/s (2)
- Annual crops 8 m(1/3)/s
- Perennial crops 8 m(1/3)/s
- Unsed land 5 m(1/3)/s
- Natural forest 2 m(1/3)/s
- Urban 90 m(1/3)/s (3)
- Water surface 33 m(1/3)/s
* Unsaturated flow - soil property where the Xobs is observed value and X model is modelled
- Clay 0.5 value at time/ place i.
Water content at saturation 0.32
* Calibration and validation with discharge:
Water content at field capacity 0.2
Water content at wilting point 1.2 10-8 m/s Hydrographs in Figure 3 demonstrate that the model
Saturated hydraulic conductivity simulates relatively accurately the runoff in Vu Gia Thu
- Suit loam
Bon catchment. Simulated base flows at the two stations
Water content at saturation 0.39
Nong Son and Thanh My are similar to the
Water content at field capacity 0.18
Water content at wilting point 0.1
measurements. However, it seems that the peak of sub-
Saturated hydraulic conductivity 2.45 10-6 m/s main flood is not presented well. This limitation may
- Loamy Sand causes by the quality of observation data. In dry season,
Water content at saturation 0.43 the data is only captured once or twice per day, so it
Water content at field capacity 0.32 could not present precisely the time of sub-main flood
Water content at wilting point 0.18 appearance. It is really difficult to overcome the problem

5
concerning to missing data. Generally, peak floods are
almost the same to observation data. Occasionally, some
peaks are higher than reality but the difference is not very
high, it is reasonably acceptable. In theory, this problem
could be completely controlled. With simulation for small
area and in short time, this issue seems uncomplicated to
reach a better situation by modifying parameters related
on concentration time and infiltration. However, for ten
years simulation in a large area, this problem becomes
more complex. It needs to take more time to calibrate.
Selecting between an acceptable results and higher
performed model must be considered carefully.
Furthermore, the more accuracy of MIKE SHE model in
describing the runoff in dry season than flood season
might be understandable under the data aspect. The base
flow is mainly composed from groundwater, so this
component is not dependent so much on data factor,
Figure 3. Calibrated and validated hydrographs of discharge
such as rainfall. Therefore, this component of runoff is
more stable through long time and closer with the
measurement if the model is set well. On the contrary,
peak flow is influenced by rainstorm event. The time step
of rainfall data input decides hugely to concentration
time, concretely to peak discharge. For this reason, the
rainfall data input using large step might be the main
cause of the differences of peak discharge in this MIKE
SHE which use daily rainfall input. Nevertheless, the
higher discharge in wet season when simulating the
impact of climate change might result in better
protections. The quality of this simulation also prove
through validated period.
6
 Figure 4. Calibrated and validated hydrographs of water level.

The flow in ten years is regenerated approximately with probably adds a certain value to show the correlative
the observation. The simulated flow in these ten years level of model result with real data.
also indicated that the tendency of simulated peak
discharge is higher than measurement. Table 2: Statistical indices of MIKE SHE model in
Vu Gia Thu Bon catchment.
The efficiency of MIKE SHE model is also shown through
the statistical coefficients in Table 2. Daily and monthly Calibaration Validation
discharges are compared between simulation and Station (1991-2000) (2001-2010)
RMSE R E RMSE R E
observation. These numbers prove the accuracy of this
H Thanh My 0.77 0.86 0.67 0.68 0.83 0.61
model in describing the hydrological process in Vu Gia
H Ai Nghia 0.7 0.81 0.63 0.66 0.78 0.56
Thu Bon catchment. The R and E coefficients at Nong Son H Cam le 0.26 0.83 0.12 0.28 0.8 -0.46
and Thanh My in the calibration period reach 0.92, 0.89 H HiepDuc 0.77 0.89 0.77 0.91 0.83 0.59
and 0.82, 0.78, respectively. In the validation period, these H Nong Son 0.89 0.88 0.76 0.84 0.86 0.72
factors reduce, but not very low, R and E coefficients at H Giao Thuy 0.85 0.85 0.61 0.73 0.82 0.6
Nong Son station is 0.92 and 0.82 and at Thanh My is 0.90 H Cau Lau 0.44 0.84 0.56 0.47 0.83 0.16
and 0.69. The RMSE coefficient at Nong Son and Thanh Q Thanh My 132.3 0.89 0.78 123.2 0.9 0.69
My in both period are relatively small. In ten years, the Q Nong Son 288.7 0.92 0.82 250.5 0.91 0.82
RMSE of simulation are only 132.3 m 3/s at Thanh My,
and 288.7 m 3/s at Nong Son while the RMSE of One more important, if we refer on the rate between
validation at Thanh My is 123.2 m 3/s and at Nong Son is statistical coefficients of water level on statistical
250.5 m3/s. coefficients of discharge at Nong Son and Thanh My
stations where have both of these kinds of observed data
* Calibration and validation with water level: and hypothesize that this relation is similar to other
The similar shape between model and observation in stations, it is completely possible to believe that the flow
Figure 4 is again to illustrate the simulated capacity of at these stations could be evidently reproduced well. It is
MIKE SHE. Nevertheless, precision of simulated water a strong point to make more confident on the estimating
level is not perfect like discharge. These differences the variation tendency of stream flow in future, in
conduct to the statistical coefficients of water level particular in location do not have data.
comparison between simulation and measurement are
not as high as these one of discharge case (Table 2). The Through these hydrographs and coefficients, the flow in
relation coefficient in all stations is around 0.8 to 0.9 but Vu Gia Thu Bon catchment is reproduced rather
Nash-Sutcliffe coefficients are low, it varies from 0.6 to impressively, not only via discharge but also via water
0.7 at upstream station and smaller in station under the level. These results demonstrate the performance of Mike
effect of tidal level. The source of this inaccuracy might She model when simulating the hydrological process and
be from the coarse resolution of topography data and the this model is able to estimate the variability of stream
lack of measured cross section, as well as the big distance flow under the impact of climate change.
of two computed note (dx) in MIKE 11. Related on the
resolution of data and distance dx, there are up till now 5. CONCLUSIONS
many studies on these problems. The contrasted relation
between cell size, quality of simulation and computation With the aim of providing a tool to simulating the
time is an insolvable issue, in particular towards big area hydrological process and estimating the impacts of
and longtime period (Xevi, 1997, Vzquez, 2002). Thus, climate change on runoff of Vu Gia Thu Bon river
satisfying all of these requirements are not easy. Despite system, a deterministic hydrological model MIKE SHE
the fact that statistical coefficients of water level are still model- is built. This model accounted mostly the runoff
low, calibrating the model relying on this factors factors, from surface flow to groundwater flow, and
evapotranspiration, so this model is expected to

7
 reproduce the happening of hydrological cycle in this
catchment. Relying on these considerable progress, this
model is hoped to reduce a part of uncertainty when
assessing the impact of climate change for the region. On
the other hand, another advance of fully deterministic
distributed model is to help to overcome the weakness of
lack of the data. The difference between the actual and
future runoff regime could be compared in anywhere
over the catchment. Hence, an overview of change in run
off regime in the whole catchment could be generated
without difficultly. These great points confirm the
capacity of distributed model in modeling the
hydrological process and climate change. This model is
calibrated and validated against daily data and monthly
data in the period of 1990-2000 and 2001-2010,
respectively. The performance of model is showed via the
shapes of hydrograph, and via statistical indices
comparing with seven gauging stations in this catchment.
These comparisons are carried out not only the discharge
best also on the water lever in different locations of the
Vu Gia Thu Bon catchment whereby prove the necessary
to compare the measurement and simulation at multi-
site. The multi-site calibration help to increase the
accuracy in translating what happen in the nature to
model as well as minimize the uncertainty of model. This
model still contains many uncertainties. These
uncertainties are from many sources such as, model
structure, cell size, and input data. Eliminating these
source is likely unable. Hence, it is necessary to realize on
many model with different cell sizes and data accurate
definition to minimize highly the uncertainty.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the Hydro meteorological Center in mid
central Viet Nam, the Central Viet Nam Division of Water
Resources Planning and Investigation, LUCCI project, P1-
08 VIE project where provided the data for this study.
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