TY - JOUR

T1 - Short time step continuous rainfall modeling and simulation of extreme events

AU - Callau Poduje, A. C.

AU - Haberlandt, U.

N1 - Funding information: The authors would like to thank the colleagues for their help and useful comments, special thanks go to Bora Shehu and Tam Nguyen. Valuable suggestions from Benedikt Gräler on an early version of the manuscript are as well appreciated. The results presented in this study are part of a research project about synthetic generation of time series of precipitation for the optimal planning and operation of urban drainage systems (INIS-SYNOPSE), funded under grant number 033W002A-G by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung BMBF) who are gratefully acknowledged. We are also thankful for the provision and right to use data from the German National Weather Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst DWD). The different contributors of the R Development Core Team (2012) are as well acknowledged. The authors appreciate the constructive suggestions from the two anonymous reviewers along with the associate editor which helped improve the quality of the manuscript considerably.

PY - 2017/9

Y1 - 2017/9

N2 - The design, planning, operation and overall assessment of urban drainage systems require long and continuous rain series in a high temporal resolution. Unfortunately, the availability of this data is usually short. Nevertheless a precipitation model could be used to tackle this shortcoming; therefore it is in the aim of this study to present a stochastic point precipitation model to reproduce average rainfall event properties along with extreme values. For this purpose a model is proposed to generate long synthetic series of rainfall for a temporal resolution of 5 min. It is based on an alternating renewal framework and events are characterized by variables describing durations, amounts and peaks. A group of 24 stations located in the north of Germany is used to set up and test the model. The adequate modeling of joint behaviour of rainfall amount and duration is found to be essential for reproducing the observed properties, especially for the extreme events. Copulas are advantageous tools for modeling these variables jointly; however caution must be taken in the selection of the proper copula. The inclusion of seasonality and small events is as well tested and found to be useful. The model is directly validated by generating long synthetic time series and comparing them with observed ones. An indirect validation is as well performed based on a fictional urban hydrological system. The proposed model is capable of reproducing seasonal behaviour and main characteristics of the rainfall events including extremes along with urban flooding and overflow behaviour. Overall the performance of the model is acceptable compared to the design practice. The proposed model is simple to interpret, fast to implement and to transfer to other regions, whilst showing acceptable results.

AB - The design, planning, operation and overall assessment of urban drainage systems require long and continuous rain series in a high temporal resolution. Unfortunately, the availability of this data is usually short. Nevertheless a precipitation model could be used to tackle this shortcoming; therefore it is in the aim of this study to present a stochastic point precipitation model to reproduce average rainfall event properties along with extreme values. For this purpose a model is proposed to generate long synthetic series of rainfall for a temporal resolution of 5 min. It is based on an alternating renewal framework and events are characterized by variables describing durations, amounts and peaks. A group of 24 stations located in the north of Germany is used to set up and test the model. The adequate modeling of joint behaviour of rainfall amount and duration is found to be essential for reproducing the observed properties, especially for the extreme events. Copulas are advantageous tools for modeling these variables jointly; however caution must be taken in the selection of the proper copula. The inclusion of seasonality and small events is as well tested and found to be useful. The model is directly validated by generating long synthetic time series and comparing them with observed ones. An indirect validation is as well performed based on a fictional urban hydrological system. The proposed model is capable of reproducing seasonal behaviour and main characteristics of the rainfall events including extremes along with urban flooding and overflow behaviour. Overall the performance of the model is acceptable compared to the design practice. The proposed model is simple to interpret, fast to implement and to transfer to other regions, whilst showing acceptable results.

KW - Continuous simulation

KW - Copulas

KW - Extreme events

KW - High temporal resolution

KW - Stochastic point precipitation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85021628806&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.06.036

DO - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.06.036

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85021628806

VL - 552

SP - 182

EP - 197

JO - Journal of hydrology

JF - Journal of hydrology

SN - 0022-1694

ER -