Effects of digital elevation model resolution on rain-on-grid simulations: a case study in a Slovenian watershed
Marcos Julien Alexopoulos, Panayiotis Dimitriadis, Theano Iliopoulou, Nejc Bezak, Mira Kobold, Demetris Koutsoyiannis
Abstract
The study evaluates the rain-on-grid (RoG) hydraulic model’s sensitivity to digital elevation model (DEM) resolution when simulating an extreme flood in Slovenia. The RoG model is validated against a high-resolution benchmark, showing strong agreement with a Kling-Gupta efficiency of 0.913 and Pearson correlation of 0.964 for a 1 m DEM. Differences are observed in peak shapes and concentration times, attributed to rainfall propagation in RoG grids. DEM resolution significantly impacts performance, with the largest decrease between resolutions of 1 and 5 m. Coarser DEMs yielded higher depths, indicating slope decreases and terrain smoothing. The study concludes that high-resolution DEMs (<1 m) are needed for adequate RoG performance, while commercially available coarser DEMs (30 m) degraded accuracy and should be avoided using this method. Differences from semi-empirical concentration time models are also discussed, and emphasis is placed also on the impacts on water velocity and numerical stability.