Coupling of weather radar rainfall data with hydrological model and its application to flood forecasting

A study was made on the coupling of weather radar rainfall data with the hydrological model for flood forecasting. The comparison of the rainfall distributions on river basins evaluated by precipitation gauges and the weather radar rainfall estimate technique shows that the result from the latter method is more close to the reality, which accords with the landform of river basins. To meet the requirement of real-time flood prediction, the Kalman filter was adopted for correction of the weather radar rainfall data, and the number of rainfall stations selected was the same as that of the flood prediction stations arranged by the water information department. In consideration of the fact that the weather radar rainfall data are of distributed characteristics, the distributed hydrological model was adopted. The flood forecasting performed for the Jiangjiaji Station of the Shiguanhe catchment of the Huaihe River shows that the weather radar rainfall estimate technique has wide scope of application.