Abstract:
Abstract
The main motivation for this research is the growing awareness of the impact of climate
change and the increasing relevance of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,
aiming to contribute to the measurement of quantities like precipitation and rate of rainfall.
This knowledge is widely used in hydrology, climatology and meteorology, providing data and
information applied in modelling, pattern definition and recognition, and forecasting. This
work is concerned with estimating the average areal rainfall in a stipulated region from rainfall
intensity observations made at measurement stations within that region. It focuses on three
straightforward estimation approaches: the arithmetic mean method, the Thiessen polygon
method and the isohyetal method. The evaluation of the associated measurement uncertainty,
for which the law of propagation of uncertainty and a Monte Carlo method as described in
guidance documents from the Joint Committee for Guides in Metrology are applied, is the
main consideration. The approaches described may be readily applied by practitioners. A
comparison of results from applying these methods to a simple example is made. Such results
are required for conformity assessment and support in urban management and water resources
management worldwide.
