Modelling and simulation of volumetric rainfall for a catchment in the Murray-Darling Basin

Authors

  • John Boland University of South Australia
  • Phil Howlett University of South Australia
  • Julia Piantadosi University of South Australia
  • roslinazairimah Zakaria Universiti Malaysia Pahang

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21914/anziamj.v58i0.10633

Keywords:

rainfall modelling, correlated Gamma distributions, copulas of maximum entropy

Abstract

We discuss modelling and simulation of volumetric rainfall in a catchment of the Murray–Darling Basin – an important food production region in Australia that was seriously affected by a recent prolonged drought. Consequently, there has been sustained interest in development of improved water management policies. In order to model accumulated volumetric catchment rainfall over a fixed time period, it is necessary to sum weighted rainfall depths at representative sites within each sub-catchment. Since sub-catchment rainfall may be highly correlated, the use of a Gamma distribution to model rainfall at each site means that catchment rainfall is expressed as a sum of correlated Gamma random variables. We compare four different models and conclude that a joint probability distribution for catchment rainfall constructed by using a copula of maximum entropy is the most effective. doi:10.1017/S1446181116000183

Published

2017-01-31

Issue

Section

Articles for Printed Issues