Calibration of Hydraulic Model for Buna River

River flooding is one of the most frequent natural hazards in Albania. The area which is more vulnerable from river flooding is the area located in the county of Shkodra, in the northern part. This area has been significantly affected from flooding of Buna River in the recent years. Buna River, with a total length of around 44 km, collects the water from an important water system in Albania, composed of Shkodra Lake and Drini River, for which a flood model has been set-up using the HEC-RAS hydraulic software, based on the digital terrain model in WGS-84 coordinate system developed from the topographic survey made from both countries Albania and Montenegro. The hydraulic model built for Buna River have been calibrated using the trial and error method, reducing the difference between computed and observed water levels, by manually changing hydraulic roughness coefficients, Manning’s “n” values for the main channel and the overbank area. Model performance during the calibration phase it is evaluated through both qualitative and quantitative measures, including both graphical comparisons of calculated and measured water levels and statistical tests. For the Buna River, the water levels modelled by HEC-RAS are in fairly good agreement with the observed data from online station. The values of the model error chosen to evaluate the performance of the hydraulic model after calibration process for low-flow and high- flow are quite satisfactory.

Keywords:

HEC-RAS, Buna River, mathematical model model calibration,

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