It’s somewhat disputed whether Thomas A. Edison actually said "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" but the sentiment holds true for modellers and their models. In this session, inspired by the 2008 'Court of Miracles of Hydrology' workshop, we invite contributions from modellers on the cases where their models have failed or not behaved as expected. These failure stories are rarely published in the scientific literature. By identifying the key lessons learned by sharing stories of case studies/catchments where previously well behaved models performed poorly it can help others to avoid repeating the same mistakes. We welcome contributions from all environmental modellers – the aims here is to lead to improved prediction across the wide spectrum of environmental modelling. Topics may cover statistical approaches through to physical models, data 'outliers' and failures in operationalising models.
Key topics: Modelling, Errors, Failure