A Point Rainfall Generator With Internal Storm Structure

• Published in: Water resources research 1986-04, Vol.22 (4), p.475-482
• Main Authors: Marien, J. L., Vandewiele, G. L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0043-1397; 1944-7973
• DOI: 10.1029/WR022i004p00475

A point rainfall generator is a probabilistic model for the time series of rainfall as observed in one geographical point. The main purpose of such a model is to generate long synthetic sequences of rainfall for simulation studies. The present generator is a continuous time model based on 13.5 years of 10‐min point rainfalls observed in Belgium and digitized with a resolution of 0.1 mm. The present generator attempts to model all features of the rainfall time series which are important for flood studies as accurately as possible. The original aspects of the model are on the one hand the way in which storms are defined and on the other hand the theoretical model for the internal storm characteristics. The storm definition has the advantage that the important characteristics of successive storms are fully independent and very precisely modelled, even on time bases as small as 10 min. The model of the internal storm characteristics has a strong theoretical structure. This fact justifies better the extrapolation of this model to severe storms for which the data are very sparse. This can be important when using the model to simulate severe flood events.