Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jul 23:7:101008.
doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2020.101008. eCollection 2020.

A general differential split-sample test to select sub-periods of discontinuous years gathering similar to different climate conditions

Hamouda Dakhlaoui  1   2 , Denis Ruelland  3 , Yves Tramblay  3
Affiliations

A general differential split-sample test to select sub-periods of discontinuous years gathering similar to different climate conditions

Hamouda Dakhlaoui et al. MethodsX. .

Abstract

This article introduces a Matlab© code to implement the General Differential Split Sample Test (GDSST) (Dakhlaoui et al. [5]). As an illustration, the GDSST is applied to five catchments in northern Tunisia over 30-year reference period and compared to three benchmark Split Sample Test (SST) methods. The techniques are compared as regards to the number of validation exercises and to the differences in temperature (ΔT) and precipitation (ΔP) between the sampled sub-periods, whose length was set to 8-year. The GDSST allows a larger number of discontinuous periods to be sampled, and is computationally more effective than the basic bootstrap to identify the most climatically contrasting conditions. In addition, the GDSST offers a larger continuum of climatic conditions and a better spread of validation periods than the benchmark techniques, which is essential to test the parameter transferability of hydrological models. As supplementary material, a package file containing MATLAB© scripts to run the three benchmark SSTs and the proposed GDSST, as well as an application example on the five catchments, can be freely downloaded.•An enhanced split-sample test based on an oriented bootstrap to assess transferability of hydrological models.•The proposed split-sample test is computationally more effective than the basic bootstrap to identify the most climatically contrasting conditions.•MATLAB© code of the proposed GDSST and four benchmark SST, with application example.

Keywords: Parameter transferability; Rainfall-runoff modeling; Semi-arid climate; Split-sample tests.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image, graphical abstract
Graphical abstract
Fig 1
Fig. 1
Split-sample methods according to (a) a sliding-window SST technique, (b) a random bootstrap SST technique, and (c) a 4-sub-period DSST technique .
Fig 2
Fig. 2
Processing steps to sample k climate contrasted l-year sub-periods from n-year reference period, in the proposed GDSST. Each point represents a hydrological year from the reference period in the climate space (T, P) . The years circled are those selected .
Fig 3
Fig. 3
The validation exercises according to four split-sample methods applied over a 30-year reference period (1970‒2000) in the five studied basins: (a) sliding-window SST; (b) random bootstrap SST; (c) 4-sub-period DSST; and (d) the proposed General DSST. ΔT and ΔP represent respectively the differences in mean annual temperature and the relative difference in annual precipitation between the calibration and validation sub-periods.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Arsenault R., Brissette F., Martel J.-.L. The hazards of split-sample validation in hydrological model calibration. J. Hydrol. 2018;566:346–362. doi: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.09.027. - DOI
    1. Coron L., Andréassian V., Perrin C., Lerat J., Vaze J., Bourqui M., Hendrickx F. Crash testing hydrological models in contrasted climate conditions: an experiment on 216 Australian catchments. Water Resour. Res. 2012;48:W05552. doi: 10.1029/2011WR011721. - DOI
    1. Coron L. ISIVE, AgroParisTech; 2013. Les Modèles Hydrologiques Conceptuels Sont-Ils Robustes Face à un Climat en Évolution ? p. 364. PhD Thesis.
    1. Dakhlaoui H., Ruelland D., Tramblay Y., Bargaoui Z. Evaluating robustness of conceptual rainfall-runoff models under climate variability in northern Tunisia. J. Hydrol. 2017;550:201–217. doi: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.04.032. - DOI
    1. Dakhlaoui H., Ruelland D., Tramblay Y. A bootstrap-based differential split-sample test to assess the transferability of conceptual rainfall-runoff models under past and future climate variability. J. Hydrol. Amst. 2019 doi: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.05.056. - DOI