Modelling Rainfall Runoff Relations Using HEC-HMS and IHACRES for a Single Rain Event in an Arid Region of Jordan

The HEC-HMS and IHACRES rainfall runoff models were applied to simulate a single streamflow event in Wadi Dhuliel arid catchment that occurred on 30–31/01/2008. Streamflow estimation was performed on the basis of an hourly scale. The aim of this study was to develop a new framework of rainfall-runoff model applications in arid catchments by integrating a re-adjusted satellite-derived rainfall dataset (GSMaP_MVK+) to determine the location of the rainfall storm. The HEC-HMS model was applied using the HEC-GeoHMS extension in ArcView 3.3 while the IHACRES is Java-based version model. The HEC-HMS model input data include soil type, land use/land cover, and slope. By contrast, the lumped model IHACRES was also applied, based on hourly rainfall and temperature data. Both models were calibrated and validated using the observed streamflow data set collected at Al-Za’atari discharge station. The performance of IHACRES showed some weaknesses, while the flow comparison between the calibrated streamflow results fits well with the observed streamflow data in HEC-HMS. The Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (E_f) for the two models was 0.51 and 0.88 respectively.