Spatial Interpolation of Annual Runoff in Ungauged Basins Based on the Improved Information Diffusion Model Using a Genetic Algorithm

Prediction in Ungauged Basins (PUB) is an important task for water resources planning and management and remains a fundamental challenge for the hydrological community. In recent years, geostatistical methods have proven valuable for estimating hydrological variables in ungauged catchments. However, four major problems restrict the development of geostatistical methods. We established a new information diffusion model based on genetic algorithm (GIDM) for spatial interpolating of runoff in the ungauged basins. Genetic algorithms (GA) are used to generate high-quality solutions to optimization and search problems. So, using GA, the parameter of optimal window width can be obtained. To test our new method, seven experiments for the annual runoff interpolation based on GIDM at 17 stations on the mainstream and tributaries of the Yellow River are carried out and compared with the inverse distance weighting (IDW) method, Cokriging (COK) method, and conventional IDMs using the same sparse observed data. The seven experiments all show that the GIDM method can solve four problems of the previous geostatistical methods to some extent and obtains best accuracy among four different models. The key problems of the PUB research are the lack of observation data and the difficulties in information extraction. So the GIDM is a new and useful tool to solve the Prediction in Ungauged Basins (PUB) problem and to improve the water management.