Calibrating environmental models using ParaMESH

ParaMESH (Parameter management for Models of Environmental Systems and Hydrology) is a graphical interface for advanced parameter management. Originally developed to be compatible with selected hydrologic and climatologic models, recent enhancements support any environmental model or evaluation tool that uses text-based input-output files. ParaMESH provides an intuitive graphical environment in which to configure arbitrary models. Additional features include parameter verification and execution management. To demonstrate ParaMESH as a flexible tool-independent graphical interface, a new extension was developed which links ParaMESH with OSTRICH (Optimization Software Tool for Research In Computational Heuristics), a model-independent optimization toolkit. The linkage provides a convenient user interface for configuring and executing a model calibration exercise. Using ParaMESH's graphical interface, users easily navigate through the various aspects of model calibration, including: selecting a calibration algorithm, configuring and defining calibration parameters, and importing observation data and identifying simulated equivalents. Once configured, ParaMESH runs the OSTRICH-based model calibration and monitors and displays calibration progress. When calibration is complete, ParaMESH extracts and displays several post-calibration statistics, including: parameter confidence intervals and measures of correlation and sensitivity.