Unified structural approach to linear flood routing

The structural theory of linear systems, which allows the non-homogeneous initial and boundary conditions to be expressed as part of a generalised system input, is applied to the problem of linear flood routing. The standardising functions needed to accomplish this are derived for three methods of lumped hydrologic flood routing (lag and route, Muskingum and Kalinin-Milyukov) and to three methods of distributed hydraulic flood routing (kinematic wave and two simplified forms of the linear St. Venant model). The appropriate Green's functions needed to complete the solution for these six cases are also presented.