Time and spatial synthetic hourly rainfall generation in the Basin of Mexico

ABSTRACT

A method based on daily rainfall disaggregation was applied to generate storm events with spatial and temporal distribution. Information recorded in 49 rain-gauges of a network located in the Basin of Mexico within the period from 1988 through 2006 was used. The proposed method has an easy implementation; it preserves properly the statistical characteristics of the historical storms and, as it is shown in this paper, can be utilized to estimate the statistical behaviour of the discharges in the main accesses to the drainage system; in combination with a rainfall-runoff model, allows testing of different alternatives for operation policies. As an example, we obtained the statistics of the areal reduction factors for the synthetic generated storms.

Keywords:

• Synthetic generation
• hourly rainfall
• Mexico City Basin
• spatial extension index
• Poisson function
• areal reduction factor

Acknowledgments

We thank the Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for supporting this research.