International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS Vol: 12 No: 01
Selecting Optimum Locations of Rainfall
Stations Using Kriging and Entropy
Ayman G. Awadallah
Associate Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering,
Fayoum University, Fayoum, Egypt
aawadallah@darcairo.com
Abstract—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 observed
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.
Index Terms—Rainfall network design, Kriging,
Entropy, Makkah, Saudi Arabia
I. INTRODUCTION
Accurate rainfall data is indispensable in
planning and operation of water projects.
Availability of rainfall data in real time is needed
for management of water resources and especially
in arid zones where water scarcity is prevailing.
The purpose of this research is to present the
methodology undertaken to select the optimum
number and locations of the proposed rainfall
stations in Wadi Ibrahim, Makkah watershed,
Saudi Arabia (Figure 1). Wadi Ibrahim watershed
is the source of Zamzam well, which is the
drinking water for millions of pilgrims coming to
Makkah. The withdrawal from Zamzam well is
determined based on the availability of rainfall
and groundwater levels in the aquifer.
126301-7575 IJCEE-IJENS © February 2012 IJENS
36
The actual density of rainfall network, in most
watersheds, is significantly poorer than the values
recommended by the World Meteorological
Organization [1]. There has been much research
done on the subject of minimum densities of
rainfall networks. WMO recommends certain
densities of rain gauge stations to be followed for
different types of catchments. For small
mountainous regions with irregular precipitation,
25 km2 per station is recommended. According to
the same WMO guidelines, the density falls to 10
– 20 km2 per station in urban areas [2]. As such,
for the 40 km2 Wadi Ibrahim watershed, 2 to 4
stations are required. The full WMO minimum
network requirements are listed in Table 1.
Several publications have applied statistical
theory for rainfall network design. Shih [2]
introduced various steps based on a covariance
factor among rain gauge stations to design the
rainfall network. Shannon’s entropy was used to
decide the addition or removal of rain gauges ([3]
and [4]). Kriging method (proposed by Matheron
[5] for spatial interpolation) has also been applied
for network design ([6] and [7]). Chen et al. [8]
proposed a method composed of kriging and
entropy that can determine the spatial distribution
of rain gauge stations in a catchment. The
approach proposed by Chen et al. [8] was
followed to select the locations of the proposed 2
to 4 rainfall stations in Wadi Ibrahim watershed.
II. AVAILABLE DATA
The nearest stations available with extent till
2009 are four stations (Azeezeah, Sharaaea,
Makkah and Laith) with coordinates as shown in
Table 2. The rainfall data for these stations are
available for the period from 2002 to 2009. The
stations are ordered in the table in descending
order from the point of view of the distance away
from Wadi Ibrahim. Figure 2 illustrates the
locations of these rainfall stations
IJENS
 International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS Vol: 12 No: 01 37

TABLE I. RECOMMENDED MINIMUM DENSITIES OF PRECIPITATION STATIONS

Minimum Density per Station
Physiographic Unit (Area in Km2 per station)
Non-Recording Recording
Coastal 900 9000
Mountainous 250 2500
Inter plains 575 5750
Hilly / Undulating 575 5750
Small Islands 25 250
Urban Areas 10-20
Polar / arid 10000 100000

TABLE II. AVAILABLE RAINFALL STATIONS IN THE VICINITY OF THE STUDY ZONE
Coordinates
Station Location Available Data Range
Lat.(N) Long.(E)
Laith 21° 20.506 39° 43.682 2002-2009
Sharaaea 21° 31.451 39° 55.115 2002-2009
Makkah 21° 26.267 39° 46.133 1985-2009
Azeezeah 21° 24.411 39° 51.888 2002-2009

Optimal bin intervals were selected using the

III. METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS
As previously stated, kriging and entropy are
used sequentially for selecting station locations.
Kriging, as an interpolator, performs linear
averaging to reconstruct the rainfall over the
catchment on the basis of the observed rainfall. It
is used to compute the spatial variations of
rainfall for each of the available years on a grid
covering 20 by 10 km2, with a cell size of 2.5 by
2.5 km2. Thus, the rainfall data at 32 candidate
locations of the rain gauge stations are
reconstructed. Five intervals are adopted to
construct the empirical histogram of temporal
rainfall distribution at the 32 candidate locations.
Jenks' natural breaks classification scheme. This
scheme determines the best arrangement of
values into classes by iteratively comparing sums
of the squared difference between observed
values within each class and class means. The
"optimum" classification identifies breaks in the
ordered distribution of values that minimizes
within-class sum of squared differences, using the
total amount of data at the 32 locations. After the
classes or bins are determined, the frequency of
total annual rainfall in each of the classes is
calculated for each of the 32 candidate locations.
The locations of the candidate stations are shown
by Figure 3.

Figure 1. Location of Wadi Ibrahim Watershed, Makkah, Saudi Arabia

126301-7575 IJCEE-IJENS © February 2012 IJENS

IJENS
International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS Vol: 12 No: 01 38

Figure 2. Location of Exisitng Rainfall Stations

A1 A2

B1

B2

Figure 3. Location of Candidate Rainfall Stations on which kriging is applied

126301-7575 IJCEE-IJENS © February 2012 IJENS

IJENS
 International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS Vol: 12 No: 01
The information entropy, which is then
applied, reveals the rainfall information of each
rain gauge station in the catchment. First of all,
the entropy of each candidate rain gauge station is
calculated after all rainfall data are reconstructed.
The most important rain gauge station is the one
with the highest entropy H(x). If p denotes the
probability mass function of X and I(X) is the
information content or self-information of X, then
the entropy can explicitly be written as
n n
H ( X ) = ∑ p( xi ) I ( xi ) = −∑ p( xi ) logb p( xi ) (1)
i =1 i =1
where b is the base of the logarithm used.
Common values of b are 2, Euler's number e, and
10.
In the case of pi = 0 for some i, the value of
the corresponding summand 0 logb 0 is taken to
be 0, which is consistent with the limit
lim ( p ⋅ log p ) = 0
p → 0+
(2)
Various estimators are used to estimate
entropy, such as the empirical entropy, the Miller
bias corrected empirical estimator [9] and the non
parametric estimator of Chao and Shen [10]
which is a Horvitz-Thompson [11] estimator
TABLE III. CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF RAINFALL STATIONS
Parameter
Collector Orientation
Distance between dry-deposition collector and rain gauge
Vertical distance between collector orifice and rain gauge orifice
Vegetation height
Cultivated agricultural fields
Pasture land
Vertical objects (Including towers, wires, fences, etc.), angle of projection from
instrumentation
Trees, angle of projection from instrumentation
Buildings, angle of projection from instrumentation
Objects, > 1 m tall, > 5 cm in width or depth
> 20% of annual precipitation is frozen
Wind shield, pivot axis
Rooftop installation
Rooftop installation, equipment separation from potential emission sources (sewer vents,
HVAC systems)
Rooftop installation, objects, angle of projection
126301-7575 IJCEE-IJENS © February 2012 IJENS
39
applied to the problem of entropy estimator. All
three methods were implemented on R software
[12] using the entropy package developed by
Hausser and Strimmer [13]. All three estimators
gave different results; however, the regions with
maximum entropy were 2 regions formed by
locations (2, 3, 10, 11, 17, and 18) and by
locations (7 and 8). The two regions were chosen
as the two first potential regions. They are shown
in Figure 3 as A1 and A2 potential regions.
To choose the next two potential regions, it
was assumed that the information of the 2 first
potential regions was introduced. With the
introduction of this information, the relocated rain
gauge station with the minimum mutual
information, min{H(x1) – H(x1|x2)}, is selected
next. The rain gauge station providing the
maximum conditional entropy H(x1|x2) is selected
as the second important rain gauge station in the
rain gauge network. Since 2 regions– instead of
one – are selected in the first entropy round, two
regions are selected in the second round based on
the mutual information concept. The second set
of potential regions is denoted B1 and B2 on
Figure 3. Thus, the optimum spatial distribution
of the 4 rain gauge stations in the network can be
determined. They are shown in the centre of the
previously mentioned regions and within the
boundaries of the watershed, as illustrated by
Figure 4.
Description
Wet Bucket 45° of Magnetic West
≤ 5 m distance < 30 m
Distance ≤ 0.3 m
Height ≤ 0.6 m within 5 m of instrument base
Distance > 20 m from collector
Distance > 20 m from collector
Projection angle ≤ 45° from top of instrument
Projection angle ≤ 45° from top of instrument
Projection angle ≤ 30° from top of instrument
Distance ≥ 5 m from instrument
Wind shield present on rain gauge
Same height as rain gauge orifice
Urban sites only
Maximize separation
Projection angle ≤ 30° from top of instrument
IJENS
International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS Vol: 12 No: 01 40

Figure 4. Locations of candidate regions within the boundary of the watershed

Potential ground
stations

Figure 5. Locations of actual selected station locations

126301-7575 IJCEE-IJENS © February 2012 IJENS

IJENS
 International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS Vol: 12 No: 01
The 4 selected regions were tested on the ground with the
criteria hereafter stated in Table 3. It was found that 3 sites
are suited for rain gauge tipping bucket type and one site
even suitable for a complete weather station, among 21
candidate sites tested for suitability. The sites are shown in
Figure 5 where sites, B, C and E, are the tipping bucket sites
and site I is for the weather station site. The site selection
criteria are thus confirming the statistical approach based on
entropy / kriging methodology and the 4 locations selected
are located within the boundaries of the regions optimized by
the statistical approach.
The kriging / entropy methodology proved to be well suited
for selection of rainfall gauge locations in arid regions using
limited information from the existing rainfall network.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
Kriging and entropy are used sequentially to determine
the locations of candidate rainfall stations in the mountainous
watershed of Wadi Ibrahim, Makka, Saudi Arabia; which is
the source of Zamzam well, drinking water of millions of
pilgrims. Using the available rainfall data, 4 station locations
are selected to comply with WMO guidelines and to manage
the water resource efficiently and in real time. The locations
selected by geostatistical approach are validated on ground.
Further research is needed to apply the methodology on a
larger scale and to confirm that the proposed rainfall gauges
add information to the spatial distribution of rainfall in the
region. Furthermore, a comparison between entropy methods
is needed to decide on the best suited method in selection of
rainfall gauge locations.
126301-7575 IJCEE-IJENS © February 2012 IJENS
41
REFERENCES
[1] World Meteorological Organization, Guide to Hydrological
Practices, WMO-164. WMO: Geneva, 1994.
[2] S. F. Shih, “Rainfall variation analysis and optimization of gaging
systems”, Water Resources Research, 18, pp: 1269-1277, 1982
[3] P. F. Krstanovic and V. P. Singh, “Evaluation of rainfall networks
using entropy: II. Application”. Water Resources Management, 6, pp.
295–314, 1992.
[4] M. Al-Zahrani and T. Husain, “An algorithm for designing a
precipitation network in the south-eastern region of Saudi Arabia.”
Journal of Hydrology, 205, pp. 205–216, 1998.
[5] G. Matheron, Traité de Géostatistique Appliquée, Tome II. Le
krigeage, Mémoires du Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et
Minières No. 24. Editions B.R.G.M.: Paris, 1962.
[6] G. Bastin, B. Lorent, C. Duque and M. Gevers, “Optimal estimation
of the average rainfall and optimal selection of rain gauge locations.”
Water Resources Research, 20(4), pp. 463–470, 1984.
[7] A. St-Hilaire. T.B.M.J. Ouarda, M. Lachance, B. Bobée, J. Gaudet
and C. Gignac, “Assessment of the impact of meteorological network
density on the estimation of basin precipitation and runoff: a case
study.” Hydrological Processes, 17, pp. 651–3580, 2003.
[8] Y.-C. Chen, C. Wei and H. C. Yeh, “Rainfall network design using
kriging and entropy.” Hydrological Processes, 22: pp. 340–346,
2008.
[9] G. Miller, “Note on the bias of information estimates.” In H. Quastler,
ed., Information Theory in Psychology II-B, pp. 95–100, Free Press,
Glencoe, IL. 1955.
[10] A. Chao and T. -J. Shen, “Nonparametric estimation of Shannon’s
index of diversity when there are unseen species.” Environmental and
Ecological Statistics, 10, pp. 429–443, 2003.
[11] D. G. Horvitz and D. J. Thompson, “A generalization of sampling
without replacement from a finite universe.” Journal of the American
Statistical Association, 47, pp. 663-685, 1952.
[12] R Development Core Team. R: A Language and Environment for
Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing,
Vienna, Austria, 2011. Available at: http://www.R-project.org.
[13] J. Hausser and K. Strimmer, “Entropy inference and the James-Stein
estimator, with application to nonlinear gene association networks.”
Journal of Machine Learning Research, 10, pp. 1469-1484, 2009.
IJENS