Review of Rainfall Data Application for Design and Analysis

Abstract

This review has been prepared for the international seminar: Rain fall as the basis for urban runoff design and analysis, held in Copenhagen, 24'26 Aug. 1983. The purpose of the review is to bring a state of the art within, 1) the statistical characterization of rain fall in time and space, 2) the development of synthetic design storms and, 3) the application of both synthetic design storms and historical storms to pipe design, flooding prediction, design of detention basins and calculation of the yearly or extreme pollutiona1 load on receiving waters from combined sewer overflows. The main conclusion, primarily related to item 3), is that more attention in this context should be put on statistical analysis of the detrimental effects: flooding and pollution. This analysis is best performed by applying historical rain records. Realistic flooding prediction is believed only to be possible with a fully dynamic flow model, whereas pollution may be studied by means of simpler models like the time area approach. The outstanding problem in the statistical prediction is the distribution in space of the historical rains.

Modelling of green roof hydrological performance for urban drainage applications

“…as rainfall periods separated by more than an hour. One-hour interevent period is the definition adopted in Denmark for single rain events based on the considerations of Arnell et al (1984). Single event runoff was defined to begin with the corresponding rain event and to end at the beginning of the following rain event.…”

Impacts of Climate Change on Rainfall Extremes and Urban Drainage Systems

“…The criteria for independence between events was studied in detail in the literature review by Arnell et al (1984). They found, that the criteria should be between 30 minutes and 12 hours depending on a number of variables.…”

Sewerage network modelling in Latvia, use of InfoWorks CS and Storm Water Management Model 5 in Liepaja city

“…Data available contained information on the duration of rain and total depth plus a description of shape (low, medium or high intensity). The synthetic rain type Sifalda (Arnell et al 1984) was used to create the shape and the maximum intensity of the historic rainfall events.…”