Indianapolis Uses New Radar Technology to Refine Hyetographs for CSO Model and SSES Studies

by Patrick L. Stevens, (M.ASCE),



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: North American Water and Environment Congress & Destructive Water

Abstract:

Indianapolis is the first city in the country to install the French-developed technology designed by urban hydrologists to accurately measure rainfall between rain gauges. Installed in September 1994, CALAMAR uses a ground truthing network of 25 rain gauges to transform raw radar images into geographically precise rainfall images. As a result, the aerial resolution of the Indianapolis rainfall measurement in the combined sewer area will increase from 25 points to 600 points (1km? pixels). This paper discusses and displays the results of the precision rainfall analysis and explains the three basic steps that transform raw radar images to calibrated rainfall rates suitable for Indianapolis urban hydrologists; 1) Selecting the appropriate NEXRAD radar tilt, 2) Advection of the storm cells and 3) Ground truth provided by rain gauge network. Motion and color are key ingredients to understanding how the analyses are performed and the presentation of this paper uses both to display the results. Color copies of this paper can be obtained by contacting the author.

Subject Headings: Rainfall | Radar | Urban areas | Combined sewers | Model accuracy | Hydrology | Hydrologic models | Indiana | United States

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