MERITS OF STATISTICAL CRITERIA FOR THE PERFORMANCE OF HYDROLOGICAL MODELS1

ABSTRACT: The performance of a hydrological model is usually assessed first by visual inspection of the measured and computed hydrographs. Numerous statistical criteria are available for numerical evaluations of model accuracy in each single year, in a particular season of the year, or in a sequence of years or seasons. In the last case, the problem of computing the overall result has to be considered. If too many criteria are used and the criteria are switched frequently, an assessment of a model's performance becomes difficult for a potential user. Therefore, this paper concentrates on just three criteria and their combined evaluation: The Nash‐Sutcliffe coefficient, which compares the model computed discharge with the average measured discharge; the “coefficient of gain from daily means” in which a uniform average discharge is replaced by daily average discharges; and the volumetric difference between the total measured and computed runoff. The three criteria are combined in a three dimensional representation that allows intercomparisons of model performance in a single diagram.