Simulated annealing for calibrating the Manning’s roughness coefficients for general channel networks on a basin scale

Abstract

The practical application of simultaneous solutions to the problem of steady state gradually varied flow in a general channel network depends significantly on the reliability of the estimated Manning roughness coefficients based on the calibration of the flow models against observed data. Manning roughness coefficients are needed for all the cross sections of the channel network. Systematic approaches for the calibration of Manning roughness coefficients for such a flow model are very sparse in the literature. This study proposes simulated annealing as an optimizer to the problem of calibrating Manning’s roughness coefficients for a steady state varied flow in a general channel network and presents its application to a case study in Quangnam basin of Vietnam.