Framework for Understanding Structural Errors (FUSE): A modular framework to diagnose differences between hydrological models

Our initial application of the FUSE method for the Guadalupe River exposed relationships between model structure and model performance, suggesting that the choice of model structure is just as important as the choice of model parameters. However, further work is needed to evaluate model simulations using multiple criteria to diagnose the relative importance of model structural differences in various climate regimes and to assess the amount of independent information in each of the models.

This work will be crucial to both identifying the most appropriate model structure for a given problem and quantifying the uncertainty in model structure. To facilitate research on these problems, the FORTRAN-90 source code for FUSE is available upon request from the lead author.