Model reliability
Research
The research for my Ph.D. deals with understanding the effects of long, persistent drought on hydrological systems and on the reliability of conceptual hydrological models. Specifically, I am focussing on the Millennium drought, which affected an area in excess of 1 million km2 in south-eastern Australia between ca. 1997 and 2009. I approach research projects in a multidisciplinary and data-driven way, with the support of digital tools for data analysis, modelling and visualization. For most of my research, I am using hydrometeorological data from 155 catchments affected by the Millennium drought in the Australian state of Victoria.
Currently my Ph.D. project is developing in two main directions: The first deals with hydrological modelling and focuses on understanding how the Millennium drought affected the reliability of streamflow projections in Victoria, this included a small study on the effects of the choice of calibration sequence on model performance during drought. The second stream deals with understanding hydrological processes during drought and for this I am currently focussing on storage dynamics; the aim is to assess how storage capacity changed during the drought and whether this affected the behaviour of hydrological catchments during this period.
The final part of my Ph.D. project puts together the lessons from these two main direction and aims at improving the reliability of hydrological models during long, dry periods such as the Millennium drought.
