Variational data assimilation for a nonlinear hydraulic model (Q1816770)

The authors consider a nonlinear hydraulic model described by partial differential equations. A method introducing the adjoint model is proposed for minimizing a cost function and for identifying the unknown parameters. Discretization in space and time are used. The data assimilated consist of values of the water surface elevation during a given interval. It is shown that accurate values of the parameters can be estimated and the estimates are stable with respect to random perturbations of the data provided that data from a sufficient number of locations are available for assimilation.