Evaluation of the SWAT model in simulating catchment hydrology : case study of the Modder River Basin

Abstract

This paper presents the set-up and the performance of the SWAT model in the Modder River Basin. Two techniques widely used, namely quantitative statistics and graphical techniques, in evaluating hydrological models were used to evaluate the performance of SWAT model. Three quantitative statistics used were, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), present bias (PBIAS), and ratio of the mean square error to the standard deviation of measured data (RSR). The performance of the model was compared with the recommended statistical performance ratings for monthly time step data. The model performed well when compared against monthly model performance ratings during calibration and validation stage.