Optimal Design of Hydrometric Station Networks Based on Complex Network Analysis

Abstract:

Hydrometric networks play a vital role in providing information for decision-making in water resources management. They should be set up optimally to provide as much and as accurate information as possible, and at the same time, be cost-effective. Although the design of hydrometric networks is a well-identified problem in hydrometeorology and has received considerable attention, yet there is scope for further advancement. In this study, we use complex network analysis, defined as a collection of nodes interconnected by links, to propose a new measure that identifies critical nodes of station networks. The approach can support the design and redesign of hydrometric station networks. The science of complex networks is a relatively young field and has gained significant momentum in the last years in different areas such as brain networks, social networks, technological networks, or climate networks. The identification of influential nodes in complex networks is an important field of research. We propose a new node ranking measure, the weighted degree-betweenness (WDB), to evaluate the importance of nodes in a network. It is compared to previously proposed measures on synthetic sample net­­works and then applied to a real-world rain gauge network comprising 1229 stations across Germany to demonstrate its applicability. The proposed measure is evaluated using the decline rate of network efficiency and the kriging error. The results suggest that WDB effectively quantifies the importance of rain gauges, although the benefit of the method needs to be investigated in more detail.

Keywords: Rainfall network, complex networks, event synchronization, kriging error.