Most of the studies that assess the performance of various calibration techniques have todeal with a certain amount of uncertainty in the calibration data. In this study we testedHBV model calibration procedures in hypothetically ideal conditions under the assumptionof no errors in the measured data. This was achieved by creating an artificial time seriesof the flows created by the HBV model using the parameters obtained from calibrating themeasured flows. The artificial flows were then used to replace the original flows in thecalibration data, which was then used for testing how calibration procedures can reproduceknown model parameters. The results showed that in performing one hundred independentcalibration runs of the HBV model, we did not manage to obtain parameters that werealmost identical to those used to create the artificial flow data without a certain degree ofuncertainty. Although the calibration procedure of the model works properly froma practical point of view, it can be regarded as a demonstration of the equifinality principle,since several parameter sets were obtained which led to equally acceptable or behaviouralrepresentations of the observed flows. The study demonstrated that this concept forassessing how uncertain hydrological predictions can be applied in the further developmentof a model or the choice of calibration method using artificially generated data.
