Quoted from: Majone, B., A. Bertagnoli, A. Bellin, and A. Rinaldo. "GEOTRANSF: a continuous non-linear hydrological model." AGUFM 2005 (2005): H23C-1441. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AGUFM.H23C1441M/abstract 

We propose a physically based modeling approach, consisting in a suitable partitioning of the catchment into geomorphological elements suitably interconnected, which uses the travel time concept as a unifying approach for bridging between the processes across the scales. GEOTRANSF is a geomorphologically based model for modeling flow and solute transport at the basin-scale that we developed for testing the applicability of this modeling framework in complex situations such as those encountered in regulated rivers. By adopting a top-down approach GEOTRANSF couples the Geomorphological Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (GIUH) concept with the Lagrangian description of solute transport extending to surface hydrology a well consolidated framework developed in the context of subsurface hydrology. In this work we focus on runoff generation in headwater catchments. The building block of the model is a nonlinear runoff generation model applied to the unchanneled portion of the catchment previously subdivided into a suitable number of elements (area) connected trough the river network. In doing that the response of the catchment, depends on the soil water content which is constantly updated at the level of the single element by solving a water budget equation that includes snowmelt and evapotraspiration. The runoff generated by each element is then routed to the control section by using the classical GIUH tool. We applied GEOTRANSF to a small alpine catchment of 180 km2 located in the alpine region North-East of Italy with a hourly time step obtaining a good reproduction of the water discharge. In addition, nonlinearities in the runoff generation mechanisms are accurately reproduced without resorting to classical rainfall separation models.