Extraction of Spatiotemporal Distribution Characteristics and Spatiotemporal Reconstruction of Rainfall Data by PCA Algorithm

Abstract

Scientific analyses of urban flood risks are essential for evaluating urban flood insurance and designing drainage projects. Although the current rainfall monitoring system in China has a dense station network and high-precision rainfall data, the time series is short. In contrast, historical rainfall data have a longer sample time series but lower precision. This study introduced a PCA algorithm to reconstruct historical rainfall data. Based on the temporal and spatial characteristics of rainfall extracted from high-resolution rainfall data over the past decade, historical (6 h intervals) rainfall spatial data were reconstructed into high-resolution (1 h intervals) spatial data to satisfy the requirements of the urban flood risk analysis. The results showed that the average error between the reconstructed data and measured values in the high-value area was within 15% and in the low-value area was within 20%, representing decreases of approximately 65% and 40%, respectively, compared to traditional interpolation data. The reconstructed historical spatial rainfall data conformed to the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of rainfall, improved the granularity of rainfall spatial data, and enabled the effective and reasonable extraction and summary of the fine temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of rainfall.