• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.49 no.7
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• pp.589-597
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• 2016

In this study, we investigated the use of satellite-derived flow (SDF) signals and a data-based model for the estimation of outflow for the river reach where in situ measurements are either completely unavailable or are difficult to access for hydraulic and hydrology analysis such as the upper basin of Imjin River. It has been demonstrated by many studies that the SDF signals can be used as the river width estimates and the correlation between SDF signals and river width is related to the shape of cross sections. To extract the nonlinear relationship between SDF signals and river outflow, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model with SDF signals as its inputs were applied for the computation of flow discharge at Imjin Bridge located in Imjin River. 15 pixels were considered to extract SDF signals and Partial Mutual Information (PMI) algorithm was applied to identify the most relevant input variables among 150 candidate SDF signals (including 0~10 day lagged observations). The estimated discharges by ANN model were compared with the measured ones at Imjin Bridge gauging station and correlation coefficients of the training and validation were 0.86 and 0.72, respectively. It was found that if the 1 day previous discharge at Imjin bridge is considered as an input variable for ANN model, the correlation coefficients were improved to 0.90 and 0.83, respectively. Based on the results in this study, SDF signals along with some local measured data can play an useful role in river flow estimation and especially in flood forecasting for data-scarce regions as it can simulate the peak discharge and peak time of flood events with satisfactory accuracy.