Hydrological Modelling

Hydrological modelling uses mathematical representations of the water cycle to simulate how water moves, is stored and is transformed across the Earth’s surface and within the subsurface. These models allow researchers and water managers to estimate water availability, anticipate floods and droughts, assess the health of ecosystems and test how the system responds to a changing climate — turning scattered observations into coherent, predictive understanding.

Research at HydroLAB spans the full spectrum of model complexity. Conceptual models capture the essential behaviour of a catchment with a few effective parameters and are fast to run, while distributed models resolve the landscape into many interacting units to reproduce how water is generated and routed across heterogeneous terrain. The group has developed its own tools along this range: DREAM, a distributed model for runoff, evapotranspiration and antecedent soil-moisture simulation (2005), and AD2, a lumped model whose calibration is constrained by physical information to improve its robustness (2018). A recurring goal is to connect process understanding with prediction — for instance by embedding runoff-generation physics directly into shallow-water hydraulic models through a runoff-on-grid approach (Perrini et al., Water Resources Research).

Choosing a model is only the first step: calibration — tuning parameters so that simulations match observed behaviour — remains a central challenge, especially in the data-scarce basins of the Mediterranean. To strengthen this foundation, the group increasingly integrates satellite and remote-sensing data (soil moisture, land cover, precipitation), extending model reliability to large and poorly gauged areas and supporting water-balance assessments and the design of nature-based solutions.

HydroLAB · University of Naples Federico II — salvatoremanfreda.it. Research developed with international partners and supported within the group’s projects on water resources, floods and ecohydrology.