APPLICATION OF GREY MODEL TOWARD RUNOFF FORECASTING1

ABSTRACT: A reliable forecasting model is essential in real‐time flood forecasting for reducing natural damage. Efforts to develop a real‐time forecasting model over the past two decades have been numerous. This work applies the Grey model to forecast rainfall and runoff owing to the model's relative ability to predict the future using a small amount of historical data. Such a model significantly differs from the stochastic and deterministic models developed previously. Ten historical storm events from two catchment areas in northern Taiwan are selected to calibrate and verify the model. Results in this study demonstrate that the proposed models can reasonably forecast runoff one to four hours ahead, if the Grey error prediction method is further used to update the output of the model.