Tuesday, April 28, 2015
HSPEXP+ Released!
I was recently notified that the new version of HSPEXP, HSPEXP+, has been released by AQUA TERRA! They retained a lot of the work I did coding up the old advice (and adding some new advice) and designing the user interface so listed me as an author. I'm excited to see all of their efforts come to fruition, and for the modeling world to finally have a modern version of my favorite calibration system! Go check it out!
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Woo Hoo! I loved seeing your name on there and Anurag as well. I am struggling with creating an .exs file and the old HSPEXP is throwing a compatibility error with my 64-bit Windows machine. ANy thoughts on a workaround to creating the .exs file? I opened an example .exs from HSPEXP+ but I don't fully understand the format well enough to make it my own yet.
ReplyDeleteJust recently found your blog and wanted to thank you very much for all your hard work and posting all these links! Being a hydrologic model calibration fan, I was wondering if you've dabbled with PEST for HSPF (http://www.pesthomepage.org/Surface_Water_Utilities.php#hdr3). It's something I've thought about checking out, but wanted to get some opinions from people who've actually used it, whether it's compatible with the latest version of HSPF, how user friendly it is... I guess generally whether the learning curve is really worth it. Or would you suggest just sticking with this new HSPEXP+ for calibration?
ReplyDeleteAlso, in general, do you think it is best to download the latest BASINS from the EPA site (http://water.epa.gov/scitech/datait/models/basins/download.cfm), or get the latest and greatest straight from the Aquaterra site (http://www.aquaterra.com/resources/downloads/basins4.php)? Thanks again!
Hello Yacoub!
DeleteFirst, a caveat that I moved out of the modeling world about a year ago, so if there have been any changes to HSPF/BASINS since that time, my response may be out of date...
Yes, I have dabbled with PEST for HSPF...but I have really only dabbled with it. PEST is compatible with any model that can be run from a command line and that uses flat ascii files as input - so yes, to the best of my knowledge, it is compatible with HSPF, and I feel like PEST has actually been incorporated into BASINS to some extent...never used it that way, just feel like I heard that somewhere. If it is not a part of BASINS or you want to use it without BASINS, you'll need to run HSPF from the command line.
When I used PEST several years ago I felt that it was not user friendly. It is a powerful tool if you want to go through the learning curve. If you have a lot of models to calibrate, it is worth the effort to learn it and get it set up. However, if you are only calibrating a model every few months, I find HSPEXP/HSPEXP+ to be more user friendly and it is my preferred calibration tool. The other factor to weigh is that PEST is fully automated and will arrive at any solution it can that meets the criteria you specify. This means it can often end up with some quite unrealistic combinations of parameters, especially if you are not very careful setting your criteria. Thus, if you have the time, I still recommend manual calibration, or at a minimum doing a manual calibration based on the automatic calibration, just to make sure all of your parameters make good common sense. I was a co-author on an article by Sang Min Kim that did a comparison of HSPEXP and PEST calibrations (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006WR004883/abstract).
I'd go ahead and get the model from Aquaterra, understanding of course that the 'official' model is available from EPA and thus your support options might be limited if you use the latest and greatest from Aquaterra.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the reply! I very much appreciate it.
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