Programme Overview
This course provides engineers, hydrologists, and GIS practitioners with a structured, hands-on pathway through hydrological modelling — from the fundamentals of the rainfall-runoff process to the construction, calibration, and application of fully distributed watershed models for engineering design and research.
Participants work with HEC-HMS for event-based and continuous rainfall-runoff modelling, and SWAT+ for long-term basin water balance and sediment yield analysis. The course integrates satellite data (ERA5, CHIRPS, SRTM DEMs) and GIS preprocessing throughout, reflecting current professional practice in data-sparse environments.
"By day three, participants will have a fully parameterised HEC-HMS model of a real Nigerian catchment and will use it to estimate design floods for a dam spillway — the same workflow used on our ACReSAL projects."
Daily Course Schedule
- Morning: The hydrological cycle — precipitation, infiltration, evapotranspiration, baseflow, surface runoff; hydrograph components; time of concentration methods (Kirpich, NRCS, FAA)
- Afternoon — Practical: DEM acquisition (SRTM, Copernicus GLO-30, ALOS) and quality assessment; sink filling and flow direction in QGIS (SAGA / TauDEM); catchment delineation and sub-basin discretisation; stream network extraction and channel parameterisation; export of basin characteristics for HEC-HMS
- Hands-on exercise: delineate a Nigerian catchment from SRTM DEM and extract morphometric parameters
- Morning: Sources of rainfall data in Nigeria — NIMET gauge records, CHIRPS v2.0, ERA5 reanalysis, TRMM/IMERG; bias correction of satellite rainfall using available gauge records (multiplicative scaling, quantile mapping); homogeneity testing (Pettitt, SNHT)
- Afternoon — Practical: Download and extract CHIRPS data for a study catchment using Google Earth Engine; fit probability distributions to annual maximum series (Gumbel, Log-Pearson III, GEV) using at-site frequency analysis; estimate design rainfall for 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-year return periods; construct design storm hyetographs using alternating block and SCS methods
- Hands-on exercise: derive design storms for a dam catchment using CHIRPS data and frequency analysis
- Morning: HEC-HMS interface and project structure; basin model setup — sub-basins, reaches, junctions, sinks; loss methods — SCS Curve Number (CN table for Nigerian land use/soil combinations), Green-Ampt, initial and constant; transform methods — SCS Unit Hydrograph, Clark, Snyder; baseflow — constant monthly, linear reservoir; routing — Muskingum, Modified Puls, Lag
- Afternoon — Practical: Build a multi-subbasin HEC-HMS model from the Day 1 delineation; populate SCS-CN parameters from land use (ESA WorldCover) and soil data (SoilGrids / HWSD); configure channel routing reaches; run event simulation with Day 2 design storms; review and interpret hydrograph output
- Hands-on exercise: construct and run a complete HEC-HMS basin model for a 100-year design flood
- Morning: Model calibration concepts — objective functions (Nash-Sutcliffe, PBIAS, KGE); manual and automated calibration in HEC-HMS; sensitivity analysis of CN, lag time, and routing parameters; uncertainty assessment; use of HEC-HMS optimisation trial manager
- Afternoon — Practical: Calibrate and validate the Day 3 model against observed discharge data; assess model performance using statistical metrics; set up a continuous meteorological model using ERA5 gridded data; simulate multi-year continuous run; analyse modelled vs observed annual runoff volumes
- Hands-on exercise: calibrate HEC-HMS model using NIHSA discharge records; compute Nash-Sutcliffe and KGE performance metrics
- Morning: Introduction to SWAT+ — model structure, Hydrological Response Units (HRUs), input data requirements; setting up SWAT+ in QSWAT+; land use and soil reclassification; weather input from ERA5 / CHIRPS; running long-term simulations; output analysis — water balance, streamflow, sediment, nutrient loading; calibration using SWAT+ Calibration and Uncertainty Programs (SWAT-CUP)
- Afternoon — Project Workshop: Apply HEC-HMS for spillway design flood estimation (PMF and T-year return period); interpret results for dam safety; discuss land use change impact analysis using SWAT+; climate change scenario modelling — applying CORDEX projections to assess future runoff changes
- Certificate presentations; Q&A and course debrief
Software & Data Requirements
Participants must bring a Windows laptop with at minimum 8 GB RAM and 20 GB free disk space. The following software will be installed before Day 1 (installation guides provided):
- HEC-HMS 4.12+ — free download from USACE Hydrologic Engineering Center
- SWAT+ and QSWAT+ plugin — free from swatplus.org
- QGIS 3.34 LTS with SAGA and TauDEM toolboxes
- Google Earth Engine account (free; sign up at earthengine.google.com)
- Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc for frequency analysis workbooks
All Nigerian catchment datasets, DEM files, rainfall records, and exercise workbooks are provided by TierraSYNC on a USB drive and shared cloud folder at the start of the course.
Who Should Attend
- Civil and water resources engineers working on dam design, flood risk, or irrigation projects
- Hydrologists and environmental scientists in government agencies (NIHSA, NWRI, River Basin Development Authorities)
- Engineers on World Bank / IFAD / AfDB-funded water sector programmes (ACReSAL, NEWMAP, RAAMP)
- MSc and Ph.D. students in water resources, civil, or environmental engineering
- GIS practitioners seeking to integrate spatial analysis with hydrological modelling
Prerequisites: Basic understanding of hydrology (undergraduate level), familiarity with Windows software installation. No prior HEC-HMS or SWAT experience required.