Rain Gauge Station Network Design for Hormozgan Province in Iran

Abstract

A rain gauge network should serve general as well as specific purposes such as water supply, hydropower<br />generation, flood forecasting, irrigation, and flood control. The level of accuracy a network can achieve depends on<br />the number and locations of gauges in the network. In this study, a rain gauge network was designed for Hormozgan<br />province in the south of Iran. Monthly rainfall totals from 124 rain gauge stations in the period from 2000 to 2009<br />were used. This province can be logically divided to four regions using the De Martonne aridity index. Kagan's<br />approach was used to relocate the rain gauge network to obtain the optimal design. In this statistical method, the<br />correlations were classified based on distance. Exponential models were fitted to the average correlations against<br />mean distances in all regions. The number of gauges and the distance between gauges were computed to satisfy user<br />requirements. The results showed that Hajiabad had the minimum value for distance (125 km) and Bandar Lengeh<br />had the maximum value for distance (588 km). Spatial variation of rainfall in Hajiabad was greater than for other<br />stations. The results indicate that 40, 50, 20, and 55 stations were adequate to represent rainfall with 15% average<br />error in the regions of Bandar Lengeh, Bandar Abbas, Hajiabad and Minab, respectively.