Precipitation Analysis

Parameters of interest in precipitation measurement

Intensity: depth of water per unit of time (m/s, mm/min, inches/hour), Duration (units of time) ,Depth of
precipitation (eg mm or inches) ,Geographic extent of rainfall (Area) ,Frequency of occurrence (expressed as a
return period eg once in 20 years rainfall)

From point precipitation to areal precipitation

Areal reduction factor : Arithmetic mean ,Thiessen Polygons,Isohyetal Method
Kriging
Areal Precipitation (Average rainfall over an area)
•Areal precipitation is estimated from point measurements.

•All the methods result in areal rainfall that is less that the point rainfall

•Point rainfall estimates are inadequate for design of drainage works when catchment area exceeds 25km2

•Average rainfall depth over an area often required, eg design of a culvert, or bridge 5

Determination of Rainfall Averages

•The average annual rainfall is a very important hydrological statistic.

• Due to lack of rainfall data over durations other than a year, many empirical design formulae are based on this
annual average value.

•As far as possible, engineering hydrologists are encouraged to use original basic data for design

•The length of the period for calculating standard averages is 30 years

Depth-Area Analysis
•For design of hydraulic structures to control river flow, an engineer needs to know the areal rainfall of the area
draining to the control point.
•A knowledge of heavy rainfalls in the area is required.
•The areal rainfall expected from a given catchment area for a given duration can be taken from those depth-area
relationships for that region
Areal Precipitation from D-A or A-R Curves
• Depth-area or Area Reduction curves are used to transfer point rainfall measurements to
areal rainfall
• The ARF is a function of rainfall depth, storm duration, storm type, catchment size, return
period
• ARF increases with increasing total rainfall depth, increases with increasing duration,
decreases with increasing area
Areal reduction Factor
•Convective storms: short duration, small areal extent. ARF decreases steeply
with distance
•Frontal storms and orographic storms long duration, larger area
•Cyclones long duration, large areal extent

Areal Precipitation: Arithmetic Mean

•Average depth method (Arithmetic mean): averages the rainfall depths recorded at different gauges
•Method is satisfactory if:
• rainfall measurements are similar in the catchment and rain gauges, are uniformly distributed over the area
The Arithmetic Mean
•The arithmetic mean gives a very satisfactory measure of the areal rainfall under the following conditions:
•(a) The catchment area is sampled by many uniformly spaced rain gauges.
•(b) The area has no marked diversity in topography, so that the range in altitude is small and hence variation in rainfall
amounts is minimal.
•The arithmetic mean is readily used when short duration rainfall events spread over the whole area under study and for
monthly and annual rainfall totals.
Thiessen method
•Used when the station spacing is non uniform. The method gives weight to the station data in proportion to the
distance between the stations
•Draw lines to connect stations with reliable data, can include stations outside the catchment
•Bisect the connecting lines perpendicularly to form a polygon around each station. The area that each station
represents is the area of its polygon
•Multiply the rainfall amount of each station by the area of its polygon, divide the sum of the products by the area
•Around the edge of the basin, where parts of the polygons extend outside the basin boundary, use the portion of
the polygon inside the drainage area

The Thiessen Polygon

•The Thiessen method requires a good network of representative rain gauges.
• It is not particularly good for mountainous areas. The effects of altitude are not allowed for by the areal
coefficients.
•The method is not recommended for deriving areal rainfall from intense local storms.

For the thiessen find the rain gauge near your catchment Draw triangles between adjacent gauges and draw perpendicular
. bisectors of each side

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Isohyetal method Formatted: Font: Bold, Underline
Contours of equal precipitation depth (isohyets) are drawn for the considered period
To determine areal rainfall: measure the area between the isohyets, multiply by the average precipitation
between isohyets
Divide the sum of the products by the total area

Isohyetal Method

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•This is considered one of the most accurate methods,

•However it is subjective
•Dependent on skilled, experienced analysts having a good knowledge of the rainfall characteristics of the region
containing the catchment area.

In drawing the isohyets, topographical effects on the rainfall distribution are incorporated.
• It is in this subjective drawing of the isohyets that experience and knowledge of the area are essential for good
results.
• The isohyetal method is generally used for analysing storm rainfalls, since these are usually localized over small
areas with a large range of rainfall amounts being recorded over short distances

Notice only the gages within the watershed are used for the average .

All gages used

All gages used

Frequency analysis

•Frequency analysis is a statistical method of prediction

•Past events that are characteristic of a particular hydrological process are studied in order to determine the probabilities of
occurrence of these events in the future.
•This prediction is based on defining and implementing a frequency model. The frequency model is a mathematical description
of the statistical behaviour of a random variable through its probability distribution function
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Frequency Analysis: Why?

•Frequency analysis is required for the efficient design waterway openings in bridges, highway and railway culverts, urban storm
sewers, airfield drainage, etc
•Frequency analysis is a tool for determining design rainfall and design discharges for drainage works and drainage structures
Characteristics of Hydrological Data
1) A lower bound of zero. No negative values are possible.
2) Presence of 'outliers', observations considerably higher or lower than most of the data. Outliers on the high side are more common in
water resources.
3) Positive skewness, due to 1 and 2. Skewness can be expected when outlying values occur in only one direction.
4) Non-normal distribution of data, due to items 1 - 3 above.
5) Data reported only as below or above some threshold (censored data). Examples include annual flood stages known only to be lower
than a level which would have caused a public record of the flood,
6) Seasonal patterns. Values tend to be higher or lower in certain seasons of the year.
7) Autocorrelation. Consecutive observations tend to be strongly correlated with each other: high values tend to follow high values and
low values tend to follow low values.
Hydrological
• if X is a random variable, it means that it is governed by a certain probability law which can be represented by a probability density
function (PDF) or a cumulative distribution function (CDF)
• We can address some problems in engineering hydrology where probability laws and models can be directly applied for making riskbased
design decisions.
• eg using probabilistic models for fitting the frequency distribution of annual floods and estimating the design flood to be used for
designing the capacity of a spillway.

Frequency Analysis Based on Probabilistic Models

• Probability models such as the normal, lognormal, gamma (Pearson), and general extreme value (GEV) distributions have been widely used for
fitting the distribution of hydrologic data.
• For example, extreme flood or extreme precipitation data are generally skewed, and for this reason, the normal distribution would not be a
suitable distribution for such data.
• Guidelines and manuals have been developed, suggesting a particular distribution for a certain type of hydrologic data.

Risk of Failure and Reliability

• Risk and reliability are important concepts for designing hydraulic structures.

For example “what is the risk of failure of the structure in a period of n years?”
. Probability
• Probability is a scale of measurement that is used to describe the likelihood of an event.
• The scale on which probability is measured extends from 0 to 1, inclusive, where a value of 1 indicates a certainty of occurrence of the event and
value of 0 indicates a certainty of failure to occur or non-occurrence of the event.
• Probability can be specified as a percentage.
• P (getting a club from a deck of playing cards) = 13/52 = 0.25 = 25 %
• P (getting a 3 after rolling a dice) = 1/6

•A system designed to handle a particular hydrological event can be expected to fail with a probability equal to the probability of
exceedance, Pe of the design event.
•The probability that the system will not fail is called the reliability of the system
Probability distributions
• Used in water resource studies, studies of extreme flows, droughts, rainfall quantities, reservoir volumes
• Annual totals: tend to be distributed normally
• Monthly, weekly totals: usually positively skewed and cannot be modelled with a normal distribution
• Annual extremes: have positively skewed distributions
• Why is the knowledge of the data distribution important?: hydraulic design is often based on estimates of large recurrence interval events, eg 1 in 100 year flood
• Good design practice requires the engineer to choose the right distribution

•Normal family :•Normal, lognormal, lognormal-III

•Generalized extreme value family :•EV1 (Gumbel), GEV, and EVIII (Weibull)
•Exponential/Pearson type family :•Exponential, Pearson type III, Log-Pearson type III
Normal distribution
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Skewness
•Skew is a measure of symmetry. A symmetric distribution will have a skew of zero, while a nonsymmetric distribution will have a
positive or negative skew depending on the location of the tail of the distribution.

Lognormal distribution
• If the pdf of X is skewed, it’s not normally distributed
• If the pdf of Y = log (X) is normally distributed, then X is said to be lognormally distributed

Extreme value (EV) distributions

• Extreme values – maximum or minimum values of sets of data
• Annual maximum discharge, annual minimum discharge
• When the number of selected extreme values is large, the distribution
converges to one of the three forms of EV distributions called Type I,
II and III
. Gumbel Distribution
• The Gumbel distribution is a popular model for fitting the frequency distribution of extreme natural events such as extreme floods and winds.
• A nice feature of the Gumbel distribution is that the CDF can be written in explicit mathematical forms;
• Therefore, its application is simple and does not require numerical approximations or tables.

Selecting the design rainfall / discharge

• High discharges and rainfalls are comparatively infrequent
• The selection of the design discharge can be based on the frequency with which these high values will be exceeded.
• This frequency of exceedance, or the design frequency, is the risk that the designer is willing to accept.
• The smaller the risk, the more costly are the drainage works and structures, and the less often their full capacity will be reached.
• The design frequency should be realistic - neither too high nor too low.
Selecting the design rainfall / discharge
• High discharges and rainfalls are comparatively infrequent
• The selection of the design discharge can be based on the frequency with which these high values will be exceeded.
• This frequency of exceedance, or the design frequency, is the risk that the designer is willing to accept.
• The smaller the risk, the more costly are the drainage works and structures, and the less often their full capacity will be reached.
• The design frequency should be realistic - neither too high nor too low.

Data Selection
• Hydrological data are random in nature.
• When the data are arranged in the order of magnitude, a series of data which can be subjected to mathematical analysis is formed.
• Experience has shown that many of the original data have no significant value in the analysis because the hydrologic design of a project is usually governed by a few of
the extreme conditions only.
• In order to save labour and time in analysis, the data of insignificant magnitude should be excluded.
• For this purpose, two types of data, the annual maxima, or annual maximum values, and the annual exceedances, or annual exceedance values are used in analysis.

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Data Selection

•Complete duration series: a complete record of hourly, daily, seasonal, annual observations for a given period
•Partial duration series: a record of events with a magnitude above a selected level
•Annual maximum series: series that contains the events with the largest magnitude in each year
•Note, for partial duration series or the complete

Annual Maxima and Annual Exceedances

• Annual Maxima The annual maximum value is the largest of all observations taken in a year.