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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2025-2797</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Hybrid Physics-AI and Neural ODE Approaches for Spatially Distributed Hydrological Modeling</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Huynh</surname>
<given-names>Ngo Nghi Truyen</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5078-3865</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Garambois</surname>
<given-names>Pierre-André</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Colleoni</surname>
<given-names>François</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0006-4142-643X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Monnier</surname>
<given-names>Jérôme</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6227-7396</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>INRAE, Aix-Marseille Université, RECOVER, 3275 Route Cézanne, 13182 Aix-en-Provence, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>INSA, Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse (IMT), Université de Toulouse, 31400 Toulouse, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>07</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2025</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>24</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Ngo Nghi Truyen Huynh et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2797/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2797/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2797/egusphere-2025-2797.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2797/egusphere-2025-2797.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Empirical models are among the earliest hydrological models and have evolved from the unit hydrograph to deep learning models. Despite their success, purely data-driven methods often lack interpretability and are highly sensitive to data quality, limiting their generalizability in data-scarce regions or under changing environmental conditions. Conceptual models, traditionally relying on simplified representations of physical processes governed by conservation laws of mass, momentum, and energy, remain widely used in operational hydrology due to their explainability and practical applicability. However, these process-based models inherently face structural uncertainties and a lack of scale-relevant theories&amp;mdash;challenges that emerging artificial intelligence (AI) techniques may help address. Moreover, high-resolution models are crucial for predicting extreme events characterized by strong variability and short duration, making spatially distributed hybrid modeling critical in the current context. We introduce a hybrid physics-AI approach that integrates neural ordinary differential equations (ODEs), solved by an implicit numerical scheme, into a spatialized, regionalizable, and differentiable process-based model. The hydrological module is built on a continuous state-space system and an integrated process-parameterization neural network. This hybrid system solves the ODEs governing reservoir dynamics, while embedding a neural network to refine internal water fluxes, all without relying on an analytical solution, instead computing the model states simultaneously. This work also presents an upgraded version of the &lt;em&gt;smash&lt;/em&gt; platform following its initial release, featuring a more comprehensive evaluation of hybrid models at relatively fine resolutions of kilometric spatial and hourly temporal scales. The results show that hybrid approaches demonstrate consistently strong and stable performance in calibration and various validation scenarios. Additionally, the neural ODE structure exhibits a hybridization effect that modifies state dynamics and runoff flow, achieving more reliable streamflow simulations for flood modeling.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="24"/></counts>
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