Enhancement of radar rainfall estimates for urban hydrology through optical flow temporal interpolation and Bayesian gauge-based adjustment

Rainfall estimates of the highest possible accuracy and resolution are required for urban hydrological applications, given the small size and fast response which characterise urban catchments. While radar rainfall estimates have the advantage of well capturing the spatial structure of rainfall fields and its variation in time, the commonly available radar rainfall products (typically at similar to 1 km/5-10 min resolution) may still fail to satisfy the accuracy and resolution - in particular temporal resolution - requirements of urban hydrology. A methodology is proposed in this paper, to produce higher temporal resolution, more accurate radar rainfall estimates, suitable for urban hydrological applications. The proposed methodology entails two main steps: (1) Temporal interpolation of radar images from the originally-available temporal resolutions (i.e. 5-10 min) to finer resolutions at which local rain gauge data are commonly available (i.e. 1-2 min). This is done using a novel interpolation technique, based upon the multi-scale variational optical flow technique, and which can well capture the small-scale rainfall structures relevant at urban scales. (2) Local and dynamic gauge-based adjustment of the higher temporal resolution radar rainfall estimates is performed afterwards, by means of the Bayesian data merging method. The proposed methodology is tested using as case study a total of 8 storm events observed in the Cranbrook (UK) and Herent (BE) urban catchments, for which radar rainfall estimates, local rain gauge and depth/flow records, as well as recently calibrated urban drainage models were available. The results suggest that the proposed methodology can provide significantly improved radar rainfall estimates and thereby generate more accurate runoff simulations at urban scales, over and above the benefits derived from the mere application of Bayesian merging at the original temporal resolution at which radar estimates are available. The benefits of the proposed temporal interpolation + merging methodology are particularly evident in storm events with strong and fast-changing (convective-like) rain cells. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.