Rainfall-Runoff Modelling Using Genetic Programming

The problem of accurately determining river flows from rainfall, evaporation and other factors, occupies an important place in hydrology. The rainfall-runoff process is believed to be highly non-linear, time varying, spatially distributed and not easily described by simple models. Practitioners in water resources have embraced data-driven modelling approaches enthusiastically, as they are perceived to overcome some of the difficulties associated with physics-based approaches. Such approaches have proved to be an effective and efficient way to model the rainfallrunoff process in situations where enough data on physical characteristics of catchment is not available or when it is essential to predict the flow in the shortest possible time to enable sufficient time for notification and evacuation procedures.