The effect of rainfall measurement uncertainties on rainfall–runoff processes modelling

2007 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 103-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Stransky ◽  
V. Bares ◽  
P. Fatka

Rainfall data are a crucial input for various tasks concerning the wet weather period. Nevertheless, their measurement is affected by random and systematic errors that cause an underestimation of the rainfall volume. Therefore, the general objective of the presented work was to assess the credibility of measured rainfall data and to evaluate the effect of measurement errors on urban drainage modelling tasks. Within the project, the methodology of the tipping bucket rain gauge (TBR) was defined and assessed in terms of uncertainty analysis. A set of 18 TBRs was calibrated and the results were compared to the previous calibration. This enables us to evaluate the ageing of TBRs. A propagation of calibration and other systematic errors through the rainfall–runoff model was performed on experimental catchment. It was found that the TBR calibration is important mainly for tasks connected with the assessment of peak values and high flow durations. The omission of calibration leads to up to 30% underestimation and the effect of other systematic errors can add a further 15%. The TBR calibration should be done every two years in order to catch up the ageing of TBR mechanics. Further, the authors recommend to adjust the dynamic test duration proportionally to generated rainfall intensity.

Soil Research ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
WC Boughton ◽  
FT Sefe

The rainfall input to a rainfall-runoff model was arbitrarily increased and decreased in order to determine the magnitude of corresponding changes in optimized values of the model parameters. The optimized capacities of moisture stores representing surface storage capacity of a catchment changed by average amounts of +24% and -20% as rainfall input was changed by +10% and -10%, respectively. Values of other parameters showed changes of similar magnitude, but there was no uniformity in the magnitude of induced changes from catchment to catchment. The results cast doubt on the validity of relating optimized values of model parameters to physical characteristics of catchments.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eber Risco ◽  
Waldo Lavado ◽  
Pedro Rau

<p>Water resources availability in the southern Andes of Peru is being affected by glacier and snow retreat. This problem is already perceived in the Vilcanota river basin, where hydro-climatological information is scarce. In this particular mountain context, any water plan represents a great challenge. To cope with these limitations, we propose to assess the space-time consistency of 10 satellite-based precipitation products (CMORPH–CRT v.1, CMORPH–BLD v.1, CHIRP v.2, CHIRPS v.2, GSMaP v.6, GSMaP correction, MSWEP v.2.1, PERSIANN, PERSIANN–CDR, TRMM 3B42) with 25 rain gauge stations in order to select the best product that represents the variability in the Vilcanota basin. For this purpose, through a direct evaluation of sensitivity analysis via the GR4J parsimonious hydrological model over the basin. GSMap v.6, TRMM 3B42 and CHIRPS were selected to represent rainfall spatial variability according with different statistical criteria, such as correlation coefficient (CC), standard deviation (SD), percentage of bias (%B) and centered mean square error (CRMSE). To facilitate the interpretation of statistical results, Taylor's diagram was used to represent the CC statistics, normalized values of SD and CRMSE.</p><p>A distributed degree-day model was chosen to analyse the sensitivity of snow cover simulations and hydrological contribution. The GR4J rainfall-runoff model was calibrated (using global optimization) and applied to simulate the daily discharge and compared with the Distributed Hydrology and Vegetation Model with Glacier Dynamics (DHSVM-GDM) over the 2001-2018 period. Furthermore, the simulated streamflow was evaluated through comparisons with observations at the hydrological stations using Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency and Kling Gupta Efficiency (KGE). The results show that the snow-runoff have increased in recent years, so new water management and planning strategies should be developed in the basin. This research is part of the multidisciplinary collaboration between British and Peruvian scientists (Newton Fund, Newton-Paulet) through RAHU project.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Radhika ◽  
Rendy Firmansyah ◽  
Waluyo Hatmoko

Information on water availability is vital in water resources management. Unfortunately, information on the condition of hydrological data, either river flow data, or rainfall data is very limited temporally and spatially. With the availability of satellite technology, rainfall in the tropics can be monitored and recorded for further analysis. This paper discusses the calculation of surface water availability based on rainfall data from TRMM satellite, and then Wflow, a distributed rainfall-runoff model generates monthly time runoff data from 2003 to 2015 for all river basin areas in Indonesia. It is concluded that the average surface water availability in Indonesia is 88.3 thousand m3/s or equivalent to 2.78 trillion m3/ year. This figure is lower than the study of Water Resources Research Center 2010 based on discharge at the post estimated water that produces 3.9 trillion m3/year, but very close to the study of Aquastat FAO of 2.79 trillion m3 / year. The main benefit of this satellite-based calculation is that at any location in Indonesia, potential surface water can be obtained by multiplying the area of the catchment and the runoff height.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greta Cazzaniga ◽  
Carlo De Michele ◽  
Cristina Deidda ◽  
Michele D'Amico ◽  
Antonio Ghezzi ◽  
...  

<p>Many studies in literature have showed that hydrological models are highly sensitive to spatial variability of the rainfall field. Limited and inaccurate rainfall observations can negatively affect flood forecasting and the decision-making processes based on warning system. This problem becomes much more evident in urban catchments which usually covers huge areas and where the runoff process is faster, due to the highly impervious surfaces. Given this, it is a priority to develop always new operational instruments which can improve rainfall data availability and accurately quantify rainfall variability in space. To face this challenge, in the recent years, it has been investigated the use of commercial microwave links (CML) as opportunistic rainfall sensors which could be integrated with traditional rainfall observations in areas lacking sensors. The technique relies on the well-established relationship between CML's signal attenuation and rainfall intensity across the signal propagation path. Here, we assess the operational potential of a CML network, located in the northern area of Lambro river (Lombardia region, Italy). This urbanized region is of great hydrological interest, since it is often subjected to flash floods, hence it requires a robust and accurate warning system. We considered a set of about 80 CMLs distributed quite uniformly over the entire study area and we assessed if and how rainfall data collected by them can improve river discharge predictions. To this aim, we implemented a semi-distributed rainfall-runoff model, which reproduces the river flow at the outlet section in Lesmo (Monza e Brianza), and we fed the hydrological model with CML rainfall data. We tested the use of CML rainfall data as input to the hydrological model. In particular, we used path-averaged rainfall intensities, calculated from CML path attenuation, as point measurements with a weight inversely proportional to CML length. To check the suitability of CML data as input to our urban rainfall-runoff model, we compared the observed river discharge with the predicted one, obtained using different rainfall data layouts. Indeed, we tested CML data but also rain gauges measurements and a combination of CML and rain gauge observations.</p>


2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Quirmbach ◽  
G.A. Schultz

This paper presents an application of radar data (DX-product of the German Weather Service) with a high resolution in space (1° × 1 km) and time (Δt = 5 minutes) in urban hydrology. The radar data and data of rain gauges with different locations in the test catchment were compared concerning their suitability as input into an urban rainfall-runoff model. In order to evaluate the accuracy of model simulation results, five evaluation criteria have been specified which are relevant for an efficient management of sewer systems and wastewater treatment plants. The results demonstrate that radar data should be used in urban hydrology if distances > 4 km between rain gauge and catchment exist and for catchments with a density of rain gauges smaller than 1 rain gauge per 16 km2.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balbastre-Soldevila ◽  
García-Bartual ◽  
Andrés-Doménech

The present research develops a systematic application of a selected family of 11 well-known design storms, all of them obtained from the same rainfall data sample. Some of them are fully consistent with the intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves, while others are built according to typical observed patterns in the historical rainfall series. The employed data series consists on a high-resolution rainfall time series in Valencia (Spain), covering the period from 1990 to 2012. The goal of the research is the systematic comparison of these design storms, paying special attention to some relevant quantitative properties, as the maximum rainfall intensity, the total cumulative rainfall depth or the temporal pattern characterising the synthetic storm. For comparison purposes, storm duration was set to 1 hour and return period equal to 25 years in all cases. The comparison is enhanced by using each of the design storms as rainfall input to a calibrated urban hydrology rainfall–runoff model, yielding to a family of hydrographs for a given neighbourhood of the city of Valencia (Spain). The discussion and conclusions derived from the present research refer to both, the comparison between design storms and the comparison of resulting hydrographs after the application of the mentioned rainfall–runoff model. Seven of the tested design storms yielded to similar overall performance, showing negligible differences in practice. Among them, only Average Variability Method (AVM) and Two Parameter Gamma function (G2P) incorporate in their definition a temporal pattern inferred from empirical patterns identified in the historical rainfall data used herein. The remaining four design storms lead to more significant discrepancies attending both to the rainfall itself and to the resulting hydrograph. Such differences are ~8% concerning estimated discharges.


Author(s):  
Cesar Beneti ◽  
Roberto V. Calheiros ◽  
Mino Sorribas ◽  
Leonardo Calvetti ◽  
Camila Oliveira ◽  
...  

Among other applications, radar-rainfall (RR) and QPE (Quantitative Precipitation Estimation) based on radar reflectivity, dual polarization variables, and multi-sensor information, provide important information for land surface hydrology, such as flood forecasting. Therefore, we developed a flood alert system using rainfall-runoff model forced with RR and QPE, and tipping-bucket observations to forecast river water levels (using rating-curves). In this study, we used an hourly dataset from an S-Band dual-polarimetric radar with two tropical R(Z) relations based distrometer data, a polarimetric R(Z,ZDR) algorithm from the literature and a multi-sensor approach using radar, satellite and rain gauge. Two hydrological models were used and calibrated using observed discharge time-series. Although our previous studies indicated accurate RR-based simulations, in some cases floods were not detected when using catchment-lumped rainfall derived from multi-sensor QPE. In this study, we advance further in this subject using improved R(Z,ZDR) relations and QPE for the period of 2016-2017 and flood event-based rainfall-runoff calibration. Thus, we focused on the development (and timing) of floods in the Marrecas River can be complex and strongly related to storms spatiotemporal distribution. To explore this aspect, we also perform a first analysis in using RR in rainfall-runoff model with a nested catchment discretization.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 2421
Author(s):  
Nobuaki Kimura ◽  
Hirohide Kiri ◽  
Sachie Kanada ◽  
Iwao Kitagawa ◽  
Ikuo Yoshinaga ◽  
...  

Recent extreme weather events like the August 2016 flood disaster have significantly affected farmland in mid-latitude regions like the Tokachi River (TR) watershed, the most productive farmland in Japan. The August 2016 flood disaster was caused by multiple typhoons that occurred in the span of two weeks and dealt catastrophic damage to agricultural land. This disaster was the focus of our flood model simulations. For the hydrological model input, the rainfall data with 0.04° grid space and an hourly interval were provided by a regional climate model (RCM) during the period of multiple typhoon occurrences. The high-resolution data can take account of the geographic effects, hardly reproduced by ordinary RCMs. The rainfall data drove a conceptual, distributed rainfall–runoff model, embedded in the integrated flood analysis system. The rainfall–runoff model provided discharges along rivers over the TR watershed. The RCM also provided future rainfall data with pseudo-global warming climate, assuming that the August 2016 disaster could reoccur again in the late 21st century. The future rainfall data were used to conduct a future flood simulation. With bias corrections, current and future flood simulations showed the potential inundated areas along riverbanks based on flood risk levels. The crop field-based agricultural losses in both simulations were estimated. The future cost may be two to three times higher as indicated by slightly higher simulated future discharge peaks in tributaries.


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