Urban storm water runoff predictions based on rainfall-induced attenuation of telecommunication microwave links

The ability to predict the rainfall-runoff response of an urban catchment is crucial for managing sewer systems effectively and controlling discharges and pollutant transport to receiving waters. One of the major limitations of optimal operation is lack of precise rainfall data. The project investigates methods and models enabling the use of rainfall-induced signal attenuation on commercial microwave links (MWL) as novel source of high-resolution rainfall data to improve urban rainfall-runoff modelling. Specifically, the project performs virtual experiments and field experiments on typical urban catchment scales (1-100 km2) i) to evaluate the uncertainties of path-averaged rain rate estimation from single MWL, ii) to develop models for data merging to reconstruct probabilistic rainfall fields that combine various types of rainfall information and iii) to define sensitivity of runoff predictions to different catchment characteristics and MWL network topology.

The goal of our project is to reduce the uncertainty in predicted wet weather flows in urban catchments using probabilistic rainfall fields originating from microwave links of telecommunication networks employed as virtual rain gauges.

Fencl, M., Rieckermann, J., Sýkora, P., Stránský, D. and Bareš, V. (2015). Commercial Microwave Links Instead of Rain Gauges − Fiction or Reality? Water Science & Technology, vol. 71, no. 1, pp 31–37. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2014.466.

Fencl, M., Dohnal, M., Rieckermann, J., and Bareš, V. (2017). Gauge-adjusted rainfall estimates from commercial microwave links, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 617-634, doi: 10.5194/hess-21-617-2017.