Application of Genetic Programming in Stage Hydrograph Routing of Open Channels

Routing is a technique used to simulate and predict changes in water flow along a river or channel. There are several hydraulic flow routing methods that model channel flow with high accuracy using lots of data related to channel geometry and specifications, thus making calculations very expensive. In contrast, hydrologic methods are techniques that simplify the calculation of flow conditions in a channel reach. In this paper, a stage hydrograph is modeled in simple and compound channels by genetic programming (GP) as a hydrologic method that does not depend on channel geometry and specifications, channel shape, and modeling time step. Routed hydrographs for simple and compound channels are then compared with a river analysis system model (HEC-RAS) and a coupled characteristic-dissipative-Galerkin procedure in one-dimension (CCDG-1D) as the hydraulic methods, respectively. Results show that the sum of squared differences (SSD) between a stage hydrograph by GP and modeled hydrographs by HEC-RAS and CCDG-1D methods, respectively, are not considerable in simple and compound channels. Moreover, GP is a capable tool to route an acceptable stage hydrograph even by using less geometry specification and time intervals in the detected stage. Those results indicate that the proposed GP method is effective in routing a stage hydrograph. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013