INTERPOLATION OF DAILY GRIDDED RAINFALL USING

EMPIRICAL BAYESIAN KRIGING

CH. Praveen Kumar1, Jothiprakash V2
1

Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India.
2

Professor, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India.

Correspondence E-mail: vprakash@iitb.ac.in
ABSTRACT

The objective of this paper is to evaluate Empirical Bayesian Kriging (EBK) method for
interpolating gridded daily rainfall data over three years of monsoon seasons at meso catchment
scale. Indravati river basin in India is considered as study area. Results are evaluated by estimating
mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (r) and
coefficient of determination (R2) for three monsoon seasons of years 2011, 2012 and 2013. It has
been found that empirical bayesian kriging method is giving better results with less bias and high
confidence.
1. Introduction
Rainfall is the major input factor for estimating the surface runoff within a catchment. Traditional
rain-gauge stations give accurate rainfall amount but their spatial distribution is sparse. There is a
demand for spatially distributed approach towards rainfall modelling to drive distributed
hydrological models in water resources field. Previous studies have shown that the spatial
variability of precipitation field have an influence on simulated volume of flow, peak flow and
time to peak flow of hydrograph with in the catchment [8; 1]. Hence, interpolation methods have
been used for generating spatially continuous precipitation surface from the point observations of
rainfall to meet the demand from distributed hydrological models [9].
Kriging is the most popular geostatistical interpolation method for creating surface from the point
observations. It is based on the estimation of semivariogram from the given input point map.
Different semivariogram models are available which can be used with kriging method. Several
studies in the literature shows the use of different geostatistical interpolation methods for creating
spatially distributed surface from daily point precipitation data at catchment scale [4; 5; 6; 7; 10].
In the present study gridded daily precipitation data sets for three monsoon seasons of years 2011,
2012 and 2013 is considered to evaluate Empirical bayesian kriging (EBK) method at mesocatchment scale. Results are evaluated with four different performance measures at three monsoon
time periods (overall time period).
2. Materials and Method
2.1 Study area
The study area indravati river basin is a sub basin of the river Godavari, India. The region
boundaries are 800 to 830 6| East and 180 35| to 200 41| North. The indravati basin has an area of
38,848.6453 km2. The highest elevation is 1325 meters. The location map of the indravati basin
along with digital elevation model (DEM) is shown in fig (1).

Fig.1: Location of indravati basin with digital elevation model (DEM), rainfall grid points used for
interpolation and for validation.
2.2 Precipitation data

Precipitatiion (mm)

The gridded daily precipitation data provided by India Meteorological Department (IMD) with
0.25-degree resolution is used to evaluate EBK interpolation method. Grid points are generated at
each center of the pixel of precipitation data and those are considered as stations for this study.
Total 166 grid stations are considered in and around the indravati basin for interpolation purpose.
This method is evaluated by considering the predicted values at 52 grid stations located within the
basin boundary. The location of grid stations used for interpolation and for validation is shown fig
(1). This basin receives majority of rainfall in the monsoon season from June to September months.
Three monsoon seasons of daily rainfall in the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 are considered in this
study. The seasonal rainfall at all validation stations is shown in the fig (2).
2500
2000
1500
1000
500

0
1

9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51

Rainfall Grid Stations

Monsoon_2011

Monsoon_2012

Monsoon_2013

Fig.2: Seasonal precipitation of accumulated daily precipitation at all validation grid stations.

2.3 Geostatistical Interpolation methods

Kriging is a well know geostatistical interpolation method for creating a continuous surface from
point observations. Kriging is based on extracting semivariogram from the input point
observations. Semivariogram is a plot of (h) versus lag distance (h). The formulation of
semivariogram is shown in eqn (1).

(h) =

1
2 N(h)

2
()
=1 (Z(i) Z(i + h))

.... (1)

Where N(h) is number of pairs of input data locations at distance h apart, Z(i) is observed value at
location i, Z(i+h) is the value at location (i+h) and h is the lag size. EBK interpolation method is
selected in this study. The basic formulation of this method is as follows.
Empirical Bayesian kriging (EBK). In this method, the spectrum of semivariograms will be
estimated based on the input observations [3]. The semivariogram can be estimated by using power
model is shown in eqn (2).

() = 0

if h= 0

() = C0 + C1 h

h 0

.. (2)

Where (h) is the semivariogram, C0, C1 and are nugget, partial sill and range of the
semivariogarm, h is lag size. The value of is varies from 0 to 2.
2.4 Performance criteria
The coefficients used in this study to evaluate EBK method are mean absolute error (MAE), root
mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (r) and coefficient of determination (R2) [2].
Cross validation technique is used for evaluating interpolation results at all validation points by
estimating various performance measures.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Interpolation of daily gridded precipitation data is carried using EBK method. The spatial
distributed rainfall predicted on 12th July 2013 using this method is shown in the fig (3). The
various accuracy measures of interpolation techniques are estimated and shown in the Table (1).

(a)

(b)

Fig.3: The spatial rainfall estimated on 12 July 2013, (a) IMD Rainfall, (b) Empirical Bayesian
Kriging, (Note: IMD rainfall is 0.250 resolution and EBK rainfall is at 0.10)

From table (1), it can be observed that Empirical Bayesian Kriging method predicts the rainfall
with RMSE value of 1.8167 for overall time period.

Interpolated Rainfall

The scatter plot of observed daily precipitation at all validation stations versus predicted
precipitation using EBK interpolation method is shown in fig (4). The value of coefficient of
determination (R2) is also shown on the fig (4).
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

y = 0.978x + 0.204
R = 0.9907

100

200

300

Obs. Rainfall (mm)

Fig.4: Observed daily gridded rainfall at all validation points for monsoon seasons of 2011, 2012 and 2013
years versus rainfall predicted using EBK interpolation method.

Empirical Bayesian kriging method is predicting the observed rainfall values with a confidence of
99.07 percent. The reason for high accuracy of EBK method is due to the use of iterative procedure
for tuning the semivariograms by minimizing the error using observed values using Bayesian
method.
Table 1: Observed and Predicted daily rainfall mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error
(RMSE), correlation coefficient (R) and coefficient of determination (R 2) for monsoon seasons of
2011, 2012 and 2013 years.
Interpolation Method
Empirical Bayesian Kriging

MAE
0.803

Performance Measures
RMSE
R
R2
1.8167
0.9953
0.9907

4. CONCLUSION
The most widely used geostatistical interpolation method namely EBK is used for creating high
resolution rainfall using daily gridded precipitation data at meso catchment scale. Three monsoon
periods of years 2011, 2012 and 2013 are used in this study for creating surfaces using this method.
Four different performance measure coefficients are calculated at overall time period to evaluate
EBK method. EBK method predicts the input values with less bias and with high confidence
values. In the interpolation methods available in GIS, EBK is best choice for daily gridded
precipitation data sets at meso catchment scale.
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