High resolution (1 km) satellite rainfall estimation from SM2RAIN applied to Sentinel-1: Po River Basin as case study

Satellite sensors to infer rainfall measurements have become widely available in the last years, but their spatial resolution usually exceed 10 kilometres, due to technological limitation. This poses an important constraint on their use for application such as water resource management, index insurance evaluation or hydrological models, which require more and more detailed information. In this work, the algorithm SM2RAIN (Soil Moisture to Rain) for rainfall estimation is applied to a high resolution soil moisture product derived from Sentinel-1, named S1-RT1, characterized by 1 km spatial resolution (500 m spacing), and to the 25 km ASCAT soil moisture (12.5 km spacing), resampled to the same grid of S1-RT1, to obtain rainfall products with the same spatial and temporal resolution over the Po River basin. In order to overcome the need of calibration and to allow its global application, a parameterized version of SM2RAIN algorithm was adopted along with the standard one. The capabilities in estimating rainfall of each obtained product were then compared, to assess both the parameterized SM2RAIN performances and the added value of Sentinel-1 high spatial resolution. The results show that good estimates of rainfall are obtainable from Sentinel-1 when considering aggregation time steps greater than 1 day, since to the low temporal resolution of this sensor (from 1.5 to 4 days over Europe) prevents its application to infer daily rainfall. On average, the ASCAT derived rainfall product performs better than S1-RT1 one, even if the performances are equally good when 30 days accumulated rainfall is considered, being the mean Pearson’s correlation of the rainfall obtained from ASCAT and S1-RT1 equal to 0.74 and 0.73, respectively, using the parameterized SM2RAIN. Notwithstanding this, the products obtained from Sentinel-1 outperform those from ASCAT in specific areas, like in valleys inside mountain regions and most of the plains, confirming the added value of the high spatial resolution information in obtaining spatially detailed rainfall. Finally, the parameterized products performances are similar to those obtained with SM2RAIN calibration, confirming the reliability of the parameterized algorithm for rainfall estimation in this area and fostering the possibility to apply SM2RAIN worldwide even without the availability of a rainfall benchmark product.

Calibration of Spatial Rain Scanner using Rainfall Depth of Rain Gauges

A spatial rain scanner has been developed based on a marine radar to satisfy the demand for spatial rain information for hydrological applications. Since the coverage of the rain scanner is 44 km in radius, it is necessary to expand the coverage by installing it in two sites that intersect each other performing a radar network. For this purpose, the first rain scanner has been installed at the Center for Atmospheric Science and Technology (PSTA) in Bandung and the second one at the Space and Atmospheric Observation Center (BPAA) Tanjungsari in Sumedang. This paper focuses on the calibration of radar observations with rainfall data from 7 rain gauges installed in Bandung area and its surroundings. The calibration method calculates rainfall depth (three parameters) instead of only the intensity of rainfall. The data period used for this research is from March to November 2020. The rain scanners have better rainfall events detection over basin area, such as Dayeuh Kolot and Cidurian, than over highland area, such as Lembang. Two calibration methods are used, and the results show that the calibration by calculating three parameters (accumulated reflectivity, duration, and intensity) in the linear model is able to measure rainfall estimation better than using a linear model with one parameter (accumulated reflectivity) for rainfall depth more than 10 mm. Rainfall estimation calculation using scheme 1 tends to underestimate while scheme 2 tends to overestimate.

Improved Performance of The CHIRPS Monthly Rainfall Estimation Extraction from Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform in South Sulawesi Region

The integration of the availability and processing of The Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) data by the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform is used in this study to extract the estimated monthly rainfall in South Sulawesi. Several areas are selected based on the characteristics of the rainy period cycle representing South Sulawesi, namely Makassar, Masamba, Wajo, and Bone. Monthly rainfall estimation data of CHIRPS in the year 2019 were validated by monthly observed rainfall at the same period showing the CHIRPS rainfall estimation has not been maximized with correlation coefficient values are 0.94, 0.63, 0.65, 0.75, and RMSE percentage 54%, 52%, 95%, 64% for each of the study areas. Then the increase in rainfall estimation performance is carried out by applying multiple linear regression method and considering both monthly observed and estimated rainfall during 30 years from 1989 to 2018, latitude and longitude point as well as elevation in every location. The results show an increase of correlation coefficient to 0.95, 0.74, 0.74, and 0.87 and a general decrease of RMSE percentage to 53%, 39%, 80%, and 67%. Thus, monthly rainfall estimation performance improvement is successfully achieved in various rainy period cycles of the study area.

Mountain Rainfall Estimation and BIM Technology Site Safety Management Based on Internet of Things

Mountain rainfall estimation is a major source of information for determining the safety of a geographical (mountainous) area. It can be done easily by using a modeling and simulation application, BIM, which is a building information modeling tool. It helps in transforming the real-time scenarios into the construction and business models. Now, this whole process can be easily realized by the help of an evolving technology known as IoT (Internet of Things). Internet of Things is supposedly going to take over the world by the end of this decade. It will reshape the whole communication architecture. IoT is actually going to be a basis for D2D (Device to Device) communication. Here, the MTC (Machine Type Communications) are going to take place which have almost zero human involvement. Now, in order to overcome the problem that the traditional construction site safety management method is difficult to accurately estimate the rainfall, resulting in poor safety management effect, a mountain rainfall estimation and BIM technology site safety management methods based on Internet of things are proposed. Firstly, based on the Internet of Things data, the limit learning machine method is used to accurately estimate the mountain rainfall. Secondly, based on the rainfall estimation results and combined with BIM technology, the construction site safety and management model is constructed. In the end, experimental verification is carried out. The experimental results show that this method can precisely estimate the rainfall in mountainous areas, and the computational results of safety factor are basically consistent with the actual results, indicating that the safety management effect of this system is good. In this paper, I reveal the complications and drawbacks associated with the ongoing mechanisms used for mountain rainfall estimations and how to overcome them by using the new technology, i.e., Internet of Things.