LISFLOOD: a GIS‐based distributed model for river basin scale water balance and flood simulation

TLDR

The paper introduces LISFLOOD, a spatially distributed hydrological model designed for simulating processes in large European river basins. LISFLOOD integrates soil, land‑cover, topography, and meteorological datasets, and is implemented with PCRaster GIS and Python, featuring detailed parameterization and data management for hydrological process simulation. Recent applications of LISFLOOD are reviewed, including a case study of the Elbe river.

Abstract

In this paper we describe the spatially distributed LISFLOOD model, which is a hydrological model specifically developed for the simulation of hydrological processes in large European river basins. The model was designed to make the best possible use of existing data sets on soils, land cover, topography and meteorology. We give a detailed description of the simulation of hydrological processes in LISFLOOD, and discuss how the model is parameterized. We also describe how the model was implemented technically using a combination of the PCRaster GIS system and the Python programming language, and discuss the management of in‐ and output data. Finally, we review some recent applications of LISFLOOD, and we present a case study for the Elbe river.