For rainfall-runoff modeling, SWAT has received a lot of attention over the years (over 1700 peer-reviewed publications can be found here: https://www.card.iastate.edu/swat_articles/) for long-term basin-scale hydrologic modeling. MIKE-SHE is a single-event hydrologic model that has also received a lot of attention.

The water allocation may be for different hydrological/crop/environment/industrial/domestic etc objectives. Depending upon your objectives, the assessment of surface water and land use changes may provide different  output if you would select different models as suggested in above reply. As suggested in Reply 1, above MIKE 11 is very robust and friendly, but is a river and flood routing model. It doesn't take into account the land use changes in to account. MIKE SHE professional (which include MIKE11, some function of HEC, SWMM, SWAT etc) is the best one in this case.

It integrates surface water with unsaturated and saturated zones, therefore the impact of surface water and  land use changes  can be assesses with scientifically and hydrological inputs.

Thank you for your answers.

About the first reply, as I know SWMM and HEC-HMS can't model the effects of land use changes on runoff.

MIKE-SHE is a good option but the problem is the expensive license.

For MIKE SHE/MIKE 11 I would recommend you to contact DHI directly and explain your intended use.

Good luck 

Morten

MODFLOW or ParFlow are also alternatives (the latter is Linux based).

Morten

Thank you Mr. Larsen. I will look PARFLOW. but MOFLOW h only groundwater module.

I am no MODFLOW expert but I know there is a stream package extension http://water.usgs.gov/nrp/gwsoftware/modflow2000/MFDOC

More direct link:

http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ofr20041042

Dear Farzad

I updated the answer above...

Best regards

Morten

Mr Larsen, Thank you for you helpful consultation.

In response to Morten's answer, I would like to explain that the River Package included in MODFLOW is only able to simulate interaction between groundwater level and river flow. Of course, if they are hydraulically connected otherwise, this package is not activated during the simulation. Anyway, MODFLOW is unable to be used as a model to asses the impacts of climate change on surface water.

Regarding to your answer I have two major options: SWAT and MIKE SHE

As I said before, I want to assess the surface water hydrological changes due to cliamte change and land use changes in a river basin. I am searching which model fit to my research.

For PhD research you can ask for a non-commercial license for the MIKE SHE software, Just contac the customer service and they will explain what the procedure is.

Thank you Mrs. Keupers for your helpful comment

I can recommend you the research of Thomas Van Steenkiste and Lien Poelmans who have, among other subjects, used MIKE SHE to determine the effects of land use changes and climate change impacts on rainfall runoff

I have general remark. As a supervisor of many PhD thesises I have always recommended not to use hydrologic models without having access to sources codes. For me closed codes and free research are a contradiction.

My remark is not against commercial software developers and distributors. Commercial models can be useful in teaching , in sensitivity analysis or in model comparisons. E.g. I initially developed the model NASIM in a research (PhD) project, which became a widely applied commercial model in Germany later. At that moment it was not interesting any more for research, we developed our own open software approaches. A commercial model should be safe and mature, which is as I said the contrary of research of which the outcome is uncertain. Pure model application (setting up a data set) is normally insufficient, but yes, there are certain cases where you can use a ready made model (with open source)  

Hello Farzad,

Sometimes back I asked a similar question on research gate and I got interesting and informative answers about different tools available. Have a look at this link:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_tools_do_you_recommend_for_stream_hydrograph_simulation

Haris

Thank you all researchers for your vaulable guidlines.

Dear Mr. Ostrowski,

I believe your quote generally. but I think when the user don't want to customize a model, he can use a commercial version such as DHI softawre. I am going to use the Hydrologic Model output as input for a Water Allocation Model such as MODSIM or WEAP. In other words, the objective  of my thesis is development an optimization model for the water allocation considering the impacts of climate change and land use changes. So I don't want to customize the hydrologic simulation model and fortunately MODSIM is free source.

If It is wrong please rectify my mind.

Best Regards,

Dear Yusuf,

Some researchers note that HSPF’s key limitations derive from it not

being fully distributed or physically-based. As a result, watershed

characteristics and climatic parameters are lumped

into several units, and both empirical and physical equations

are used to simulate the water flow.

The model requires extensive data requirements (e.g., hourly rainfall).

Some other researchers highlighted these issues as they found the calibration process tends to be strenuous and long.

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/vector/wp-content/uploads/WatershedModeling_OpenHydrology2011.pdf

We  developed all kind of models, a highly physically oriented one by Marcus Lempert you find here. This one describes landuse quite realistically including landuse dynamics and has been applied successfully to catchments of different temporal and spatial scales:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256104405_A_GIS-oriented_hydrologic_hybrid_model_%28WBRM_Water_Balance_Raster_Model%29_to_bridge_the_gap_between_conceptual_and_physically_based_model_structures

Thesis A GIS-oriented hydrologic hybrid model (WBRM, Water Balance ...

We developed rainfall-runoff models that we use for our research activity.

The code are written in Matlab and freely available on my webpage and even on ResearcGate.

Good luck with your research,

Luca

Data Continuous Rainfall-Runoff Model - MISDc (Matlab code)

Your can download the following paper:       Mupenzi Jean de la Paix, Li Lanhai, Amning Bao, Habiyaremye Gabriel: 2011 Analysis of snowmelt model for flood forecast for water in arid zone: Case of Tarim River in Northwest China, in Environmental Earth Science, SCI, doi: 10.1007/s 12665-011-1353-9

Since you are interested in assessing land use change, the use of a distributed or semi distributed model would be recommended. The use of SWAT may easily be justified here. SWAT is a process based model which can help you to understand the hydrological process of your catchment easily plus it will give you the opportunity to assess your model performance based on the hydrology of the basin from previous studies . . . The model is free for academic purposes and the source code is available for users. You can modify the different sub functions or you can add new ones as required. 

Thank you Mr. Ashagre, I have worked with SWAT in my MSC thesis. I know the SWAT mode lgreat capabilities and SWAT is one of my main options but the problem is SWAT model definition and calibration need a complete range of data. I experienced this problem in my master thesis and I am looking for a better option. As I see in some papers MIKE SHE is much more flexible regarding to the available data. So I am going to comapre these two model advantages and disadvantages or looking for other same models.

I will be interested

First of all, remember that "All models are wrong, but some are useful". It seems that you are mainly looking for a model that basically simulate the rainfall-runoff process with focus on land use changes and easy to calibrate. I certainly suggest you the well known, strong and almost easy to calibrate the HEC-HMS that is widely and successfully used for land use changes. Regarding the water allocation you may consider the WEAP an option. Why not check the HEC-HMS or even using the sophisticated HEC-geoHMS that integrates with GIS.

My first impression is that you need to run several models (freeware) instead of one, in this multi-model way you will reduce your uncertainties.... Check the The distributed model intercomparison project (DMIP), which was formulated as a broad

comparison of many distributed models amongst themselves.

Dear Mr. Velez,

thank you for your comments. I see the DMPI2 Science Plan report but as I described hydrologic modeling is one part of my thesis and I cannot run several models as a matter of complexity. The report only emphasize that distributed model work better than lumped model but the reports didnot contain the results of the models and their advantages and disadvantages. But as you said I should consider the model uncertainities especially about SWAT because it is a semi distributed model and has much more uncertainities in simulation of surface runoff and calculating unsaturated zones.

You are thinking in a right direction as far as i am concerned. SWAT is a great model to use for hydologic modelling and you can easily incorporate ur land-use change and also climate change in that. Regarding the problems faced during calibration, you better use SWAT-CUP for calibrating ur model, it is freely available software, which have different techniques with which you can calibrate ur model easily along with uncertainty analysis..

All the best for your research. 

Dear Mr. Ahmadi,

I am looking for a distributed or semi-distributed model but  HEC-HMS is a lumped hydrologic model and I think it is not good option for better uncertainty analysis.

The water allocation model WEAP, is still one of my option  but I think MODSIM can be customized much more easily, although WEAP has a better graphical outputs.

you need to precise the type of catchment you aim to model. In a case of dominant problem of urban floods I'd recommend to go for a 2D hydrodynamic models (such as TELEMAC2D which is open source (www.opentelemac.org) coupled with drainage system models.

Dear Mr. Erlich,

My case study is the main river (Zarrine River) that entered to Lake Urmia diminished in the recent years while the unsustainable agricultural development and a lot of illegal wells operated in this region in the recent years. As I said in the question description I am looking for a model to simulate the impact of land use and climate change on c changes of this region and present an optimal water allocation model regarding sustainable water management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Urmia

Dear Farzad,

What is your approach for surface and groundwater interaction as it may play a substantial role in your case study. That would be a key element and a limitation for considering the appropriate model as well.    

Dear Husain

Thank you for your comment. I was decided to focus on surface water but I think as you said in my case region the groundwater is so important that can't be ignored. I am working on this issue.

Regards,

In my opinion,you can use HEC-HMS. It is not a lumped model.You have to select different option for distribution of catchment i.e distributed modelling.All the physical processes are also available.So you can use HEC-HMS as a physical based, distributed model for your research.

Both of SWAT and HEC-HMS are semi-distributed model. You could apply both of the models and make comparison between them. 

This is a lively session. I am also going to assess the effect of land use and climate change on rainfall-runoff in a basin level (varying topography with mountain, hill and plain land) as a part my PhD now. I want to see how water availability changes at the outlet (irrigation headwork) in coming decades due to climate change. So, which model do you now suggest @ Farzad Emami. Are there any papers comparing pros and cons of available rainfall-runoff models?

Vflo (http://www.vieuxinc.com/vflo.html) is a fully distributed model. It is commercial, but a one or two month trial license can be obtained easily.