Development of new event-based rainfall-runoff equations as an alternative to the curve number method in oceanic and semiarid climates

Abstract Event-based rainfall-runoff models are practical tools commonly used to predict catchments' response to a rainfall event. However, one of the main concerns is that the characteristics of rain events are neglected in model development. This paper developed a novel event-based rainfall-runoff equation to incorporate rainfall characteristics into account. The performance of new equation is evaluated based on the root mean square error, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient, and percent bias for 13,339 rainfall-runoff events between 2005 to 2020 over 23 catchments across New Zealand and Australia with oceanic and semiarid climates. Compared to the previous event-based models, the new equation shows an improvement in runoff estimation in almost all case studies. Considering the new equation is simple, efficient, and takes the rain event duration into account, the new equation has the potential to become a robust alternative method to the conventional curve number in hydrological engineering projects.