Areal Rainfall Estimation Using Moving Cars – Computer Experiments Including Hydrological Modeling

Abstract:

The benefit of using fine temporal and spatial rainfall data resolution can be significant for hydrological modeling especially for small scale applications (e.g. urban hydrology). It has been observed by Rabiei et al. (2013) that moving cars can be a possible new source of data when used for measuring rainfall amount (RainCars). The optical sensors operating the windscreen wipers showed the potential of being used for rainfall measurement purposes. Their measurement accuracy has been quantified in laboratory experiments. The main objective of this study is to investigate the benefit of using RainCars for estimating areal rainfall when these errors are considered explicitly. To this end, radar rainfall is considered as the reference and the other sources of data, i.e. RainCars and pseudo stations, are extracted from radar data. The goal is to compare the areal rainfall estimation by RainCars with pseudo stations and reference data. The value of the additional data is not only assessed for areal rainfall estimation performance, but also using hydrological modeling. In fact, the reference data simulates the reference discharge. The other sources of data also simulate the discharge that is to be compared with the reference discharge. The results show, that the RainCars provide useful additional information for areal rainfall estimation and hydrological modelling also if their measurement uncertainty is quite high.

Rabiei, E., Haberlandt, U., Sester, M., Fitzner, D., 2013. Rainfall estimation using moving cars as rain gauges – laboratory experiments. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17(11): 4701-4712.