Analysis of precipitation data

Organizations involved:   CNR-IMATI (Italy), Regione Liguria (Italy)

The workflow address approximation of precipitation fields from rain data sensors. From the data measured, accumulated values of rain in standard time intervals are computed (typically, 30min, 1h, 2h, 3h, 6h, 12h, 24h). Based on these accumulated values, the precipitation field is computed over the whole area of interest and the precipitation maxima are analysed, together with their temporal evolution.

The innovation is

(i) the selection of different approximation methods, which are suitable to sparse data approximation and take into account the heterogeneity of data sources, and

(ii) the improvement of the precipitation field analysis by the development of a service for tracking the path of precipitation maxima.

The workflow takes two input datasets and several parameters. The services need a triangle model of the terrain and the rainfall dataset.

The workflow has been tested on several rainy days, whose rainfalls have been collected with different acquisition technologies (e.g., different types of rain stations, radar monitors, etc) during various events over the Liguria Region. The workflow achieves several interesting results:

  • it is able to integrate heterogeneous rain detection sources in a unique rain field;
  • it offers innovative ways to detect the maxima of the rainfall field, and to track their evolution in real-time, opening the way to effective now-casting of detailed rain phenomena;

The GUI interface provides an analysis tool that is useful for experts and non-experts and that allows the users to inspect the results of the previous steps, see the following figure. On this figure you can observe the rain field and tracking of maxima of the rain field over Liguria Region (Thin Client).