Raven
Open Source
A flexible hydrological modelling framework — emulate GR4J, HBV, HMETS or build your own model structure.
PRMS
ActiveUSGS Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System — distributed continuous simulation with strong snow physics.
by US Geological Survey
- Pricing
- Gov-Public
- License
- US Government (public domain)
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- Fortran, Python
- Platform
- Windows, macOS, Linux
About PRMS
PRMS (Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System) is the USGS's deterministic, distributed-parameter watershed model. It simulates the full land-surface water balance — interception, snowpack accumulation and melt, soil-zone storage, groundwater flow and runoff — on hydrologic response units, over decades of daily record.
PRMS is a natural fit for water-supply and climate-change studies in snow-influenced basins, and it couples with MODFLOW as GSFLOW for integrated surface-groundwater simulation. It is public domain, scriptable, and supported by USGS national parameter datasets in the US.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
Alternatives to PRMS
Ranked by the topics, categories and workflow stages they share with PRMS.
Wflow.jl
Open Source
Deltares' distributed hydrological model in Julia — gridded rainfall-runoff with kinematic-wave routing.
hms-commander
Open Source
Python automation for HEC-HMS — batch and parallel runs, design storms, and DSS handoff to HEC-RAS.
Caravan
Open Source
The open global large-sample hydrology dataset — thousands of catchments with forcing, attributes and streamflow.
HydroMT
Open Source
Deltares' Python framework that builds ready-to-run hydrological models from global and local datasets.
VIC
Open Source
The Variable Infiltration Capacity model — macroscale land-surface hydrology for big basins and climate studies.