Monthly water balance modeling: Probabilistic, possibilistic and hybrid methods for model combination and ensemble simulation

Multi-model (ensemble, or committee) techniques have shown to be an effective way to improve hydrological prediction performance and provide uncertainty information. This paper presents two novel multi-model ensemble techniques, one probabilistic, Modified Bootstrap Ensemble Model (MBEM), and one possibilistic, FUzzy C-means Ensemble based on data Pattern (FUCEP). The paper also explores utilization of the Ordinary Kriging (OK) method as a multi-model combination scheme for hydrological simulation/prediction. These techniques are compared against Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) and Weighted Average (WA) methods to demonstrate their effectiveness. The mentioned techniques are applied to the three monthly water balance models used to generate stream flow simulations for two mountainous basins in the South-West of Iran. For both basins, the results demonstrate that MBEM and FUCEP generate more skillful and reliable probabilistic predictions, outperforming all the other techniques. We have also found that OK did not demonstrate any improved skill as a simple combination method over WA scheme for neither of the basins. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.