The combined use of weather radar and geographic information system techniques for flood forecasting

Abstract

A distributed rainfall-runoff model capable for real time flood forecasting utilizing highly spatial and time resolution data was developed. The study region is located under the WSR-74 S-band 100 km radar umbrella and is equipped with a number of rain gauge recording stations, a permanent installation for flow measurement and a stage recorder. The entire basin was digitized to 2×2km2 grid squares by implying GIS techniques. A series of rainfall events recorded producing floods were analyzed and processed. The linear channel parameter assigned to each gridsquare is based on its location measured by the centroid of the grid square along the channel network. The estimation of hill-slope and the stream velocity are calculated based on the Geographic Information System (GIS) procedures.