DEVELOPMENT OF RIVER FLOOD ROUTING MODEL USING NON-LINEAR MUSKINGUM EQUATION AND EXCEL TOOL 'GANetXL'

Abstract

Flood routing is of utmost importance to water resources engineers and hydrologist. Muskingum model is one of the popular methods for river flood routing which often require a huge computational work. To solve the routing parameters, most of the established methods require knowledge about different computer programmes and sophisticated models. So, it is beneficial to have a tool which is comfortable to users having more knowledge about everyday decision making problems rather than the development of computational models as the programmes. The use of micro-soft excel and its relevant tool like solver by the practicing engineers for normal modeling tasks has become common over the last few decades. In excel environment, tools are based on graphical user interface which are very comfortable for the users for handling database, modeling, data analysis and programming. GANetXL is an add-in for Microsoft Excel, a leading commercial spreadsheet application for Windows and MAC operating systems. GANetXL is a program that uses a Genetic Algorithm to solve a wide range of single and multi-objective problems. In this study, non-linear Muskingum routing parameters are solved using GANetXL. Statistical Model performances are compared with the earlier results and found satisfactory.