Selecting Optimum Locations of Rainfall Stations Using Kriging and Entropy

Availability of rainfall data in real time is needed for management of important water resources like that of Zamzam well in Makkah watershed. However, rainfall network, in most watersheds, is significantly poorer than the values recommended by the World Meteorological Organization. A methodology based on the sequential use of kriging and entropy principles is used to determine the spatial distribution of potential rainfall gauging stations. Kriging, which performs linear averaging to reconstruct the rainfall over the watershed on the basis of observe d rainfall data, is used to compute the spatial variations of rainfall in the locations of candidate stations. The information entropy reveals the rainfall information of each of the candidate locations. By calculating the joint entropy, the candidate stations are prioritized. The methodology is applied on Makkah watershed using geostatistical analyst in ArcGIS software for kriging and R software for information entropy. The candidate locations are validated on ground and final stations locations are selected.