Effects of Digital Elevation Model resolution on Rain-on-Grid simulations: a case study in a Slovenian watershed

The study evaluates the Rain on Grid (RoG) hydraulic model’s sensitivity to Digital Elevation Model (DEM) resolution when simulating an extreme flood in Slovenia. The RoG model is validated against a high-resolution benchmark, showing strong agreement with a Kling-Gupta Efficiency of 0.913 and Pearson correlation of 0.964 for a 1 m DEM. Differences are observed in peak shapes and concentration times, attributed to rainfall propagation in RoG grids. DEM resolution significantly impacts performance, with the largest decrease between 1 m and 5 m resolutions. Coarser DEMs yielded higher depths, indicating slope decreases and terrain smoothing. The study concludes that high-resolution DEMs (<1m) are needed for adequate RoG performance, while commercially available coarser DEMs (30m) degraded accuracy and should be avoided using this method. Differences from semi-empirical concentration time models are also discussed, and an emphasis is given also on the impacts on water velocity and numerical stability.