Author(s): I. Andres-Domenech; R. Garcia-Bartual; M. Rico Cortes; E. Albentosa Hernandez
Linked Author(s): Ignacio Andrés Doménech, Miguel Rico Cortés
Keywords: No keywords
Abstract: The Spanish Mediterranean fa? ade usually experiences flash floods caused by torrential rainstorms. Consequently, achieving a deeper knowledge about rainfall characteristics has been of paramount importance to improve design criteria and to develop more efficient and safer hydraulic infrastructures. This research develops a new framework to define design storms with temporal and spatial distribution, based on observed rainfall patterns. It is applied to the rainfall features of Valencia, Spain. Convective episodes have been identified from the 1990–2012 period and individual storms have been extracted; statistical description of their internal characteristics (volume, duration and peak intensity) has been performed. Dependencies between the three variables are explored and mathematical relationships proposed. The processed data is finally used to fit the temporal pattern of the theoretical model for the design storm, based on a Gamma function. Results for Valencia data show a good performance of the model, which basically captures the most essential temporal patterns of rainstorms.
Year: 2016