Soil moisture is a key element in the hydrological cycle, regulating evapotranspiration, precipitation, infiltration and overland flow. However, its effective utilisation in hydrological modelling is still in a state of infancy. Generally, hydrological application of soil moisture data requires: 1) soil moisture data relevant to hydrology, and 2) appropriate hydrological model structure compatible with such data. This thesis focuses on tackling those two aspects by enhancing the compatibility between soil moisture observations and operational hydrological models' soil moisture state variable. In this study satellite soil moisture observations are mainly focused on, because of their increasing availability and large-scale global coverage