• In many hydrologic design projects the first step is

the determination of the rainfall event to be used.

• The event is hypothetical, and is usually termed the
design storm event. The most common approach of
determining the design storm event involves a
relationship between rainfall intensity (or depth),
duration, and the frequency (or return period)
appropriate for the facility and site location.
• When local rainfall data are available, IDF curves
can be developed using frequency analysis. Steps
for IDF analysis are:

• Select a design storm duration D, say D=24 hours.

• Collect the annual maximum rainfall depth of the selected
duration from n years of historic data.
• Determine the probability distribution of the D-hr annual
maximum rainfall. The mean and standard deviation of the
D-hr annual maximum rainfall are estimated.
• Calculate the D-hr T-yr design storm depth XT by
using the following frequency factor equation:
X T    KT 
where ,  and KT are mean, standard deviation
and frequency factor, respectively. Note that the
frequency factor is distribution-specific.
• Calculate the average intensity iT ( D)  X T / D and
repeat Steps 1 through 4 for various design storm
durations.
• Construct the IDF curves.
• Methods of plotting positions can also be used to determine the
design storm depths. Most of these methods are empirical. If n
is the total number of values to be plotted and m is the rank of a
value in a list ordered by descending magnitude, the
exceedence probability of the mth largest value, xm, is , for
large n, shown in the following table.
• An IDF curve is NOT a time history of rainfall
within a storm.

• IDF curves are often fitted to Horner's equation

aT m
iT ( D) 
( D  b) c
Runoff coefficients for use in the rational formula
(Table 15.1.1 of Applied Hydrology by Chow et al. )
• Rainfall intensity is constant at all time.
• Rainfall is uniformly distributed in space.
• Storm duration is equal to or longer than the time
of concentration tc.
• Definition of the time of concentration tc
The time for the runoff to become established and flow
from the most remote part of the drainage area to
drainage outlet.
• Hyetographs of typical storm types
Rainfall frequency Total rainfall depth
analysis

Design storm Time distribution of

hyetograph total rainfall

Rainfall-runoff Runoff hydrograph

modeling
• The SCS 24-hr design storm hyetographs
• The alternating block model
• The average rank Model
• The triangular hyetograph model
• The simple scaling Gauss-Markov
model
• This model uses the intensity-duration-
frequency (IDF) relationship to derive
duration- and return-period-specific
hyetographs (Chow et al., 1988). The
hyetograph of a design storm of duration tr
and return period T can be derived through
the following steps:
This model does not use rainfall data of real
storm events and is duration and return period
specific.
The alternating block hyetograph model
• Before using the rainfall records of a station, it is
necessary to firstly check the data for continuity
and consistency.
• The continuity of a record may be broken with
missing data due to many reasons such as damage
or fault in a rain gauge during a period.
• Missing data can be estimated using data of
neighboring stations. In these calculations the
normal rainfall is used as a standard for
comparison.
• The normal rainfall is the average value of
rainfall at a particular date, month or year
over a specified 30-year period. The 30-
year normal are recomputed every decade.
Thus the term normal annual precipitation at
station A means the average annual
precipitation at A based on a specified 30-
years of record.
• Some of the common causes for
inconsistency of record include:
• Shifting of a raingauge station to a new
location,
• The neighborhood of the station
undergoing a marked change.
• The checking for inconsistency of a record is done
by the double-mass curve technique. This technique
is based on the principle that when each recorded
data comes from the same parent population, they
are consistent.
• A group of n (usually 5 to 10) base stations in the
neighborhood of the problem station X is selected.
• Annual (or monthly mean) rainfall data of station X
and also the average rainfall of the group of base
stations covering a long period is arranged in the
reverse chronological order (i.e. the latest record as
the first entry and the oldest record as the last entry in
the list).
• It is apparent that the more homogeneous the base
station records are, the more accurate will be the
corrected values at station X. A change in slope is
normally taken as significant only where it persists for
more than five years.
 The double mass curve is obtained by plotting
 X-axis - Average accumulated precipitaion of nearby stations.
 Y-axis - Accumulated precipitaion of the station under consideration.
 Arrange the data (recent to past)
 Determine cumulative rain fall of the subjective station and of
the nearby stations
 Draw double mass curve
 Part of the curve which lies in straight line requires no correction
 All data lying after the deviation point from the straight line
requires correction
 To determinne correction factor calculate the slope of the curve
before and after the point of deviation
  Po 
Sa
Pa 
So

Pa = Adjusted Precipitation
Po = Observed Precipitation
Sa = Slope prior to the break in the curve
So = Slope after the break in the curve
 3410  1656 1754
Sa    0.868
4064  2045 2019

9024  6923 2101

So    1.20
9415  7665 1750
 cf   0.868
 0.72
1.20
APPLICABLE TO THE DATA BEFORE 1950
• The technique of depth-area-duration
analysis (DAD) determines primarily the
maximum falls for different durations over
a range of areas. The data required for a
DAD analysis are shown in the following
figure.
• To demonstrate the method, a storm lasting
24h is chosen and the isohyets of the total
storm are drawn related to the
measurements from 12 recording rain
gauge stations.
• The accumulated rainfalls at each station
for four 6-h periods are given in the table.
• To provide area weightings to the gauge
values, Thiessen polygons are drawn
around the rainfall stations over the isohytal
pattern.
• First, the areal rainfall depths over the
enclosing isohytal areas are determined for
the total storm.
• The duration computations then proceed as
in the following table, where the area
enclosed (10km2) by the 150mm isohyet is
considered first. The areal rainfall over the
10km2 for the whole storm is 155mm.
• The computations are continued by repeating the
method for the areas enclosed by all the isohyets.
• The following methods are used to
measure the average precipitation over
an area:
1. Arithmetic Mean Method
2. Thiessen polygon method
3. Isohyetal method
4. Inverse distance weighting
1) Arithmetic Mean - This technique
calculates areal precipitation using the
arithmetic mean of all the point or areal
measurements considered in the analysis.
2) Isohyetal Analysis - This is a graphical technique
which involves drawing estimated lines of equal
rainfall over an area based on point measurements.
The magnitude and extent of the resultant rainfall
areas of coverage are then considered versus the
area in question in order to estimate the areal
precipitation value.
3) Thiessen Polygon - This is another graphical
technique which calculates station weights based
on the relative areas of each measurement
station in the Thiessen polygon network. The
individual weights are multiplied by the station
observation and the values are summed to obtain
the areal average precipitation.
4) Distance Weighting/Gridded - This is another station
weighting technique. A grid of point estimates is made
based on a distance weighting scheme. Each observed point
value is given a unique weight for each grid point based on
the distance from the grid point in question. The grid point
precipitation value is calculated based on the sum of the
individual station weight multiplied by observed station
value. Once the grid points have all been estimated they are
summed and the sum is divided by the number of grid points
to obtain the areal average precipitation.