Evaluation of Rain Gauge Network using Maximum Information Minimum Redundancy Theory

Establishment and maintenance of a Rain Gauge Network (RGN) in any geographicalregion is required for planning, design and management of water resources projects. Setting up andmaintaining a RGN is an evolutionary process, wherein a network is established early in thedevelopment of the geographical area; and the network is reviewed and upgraded periodically toarrive at the optimum network. This paper illustrates the use of entropy theory-based criterion,namely, Maximum Information Minimum Redundancy (MIMR) for evaluation of RGN of upperBhima basin. The transinformation index obtained from marginal and conditional entropy values,adopting 2-parameter Normal/ Log-Normal (N2 and LN2) distributions are used for evaluation ofRGN. The paper presents that the derived network consisting of seventeen raingauge stations withnetwork density of 865 km2 per gauging station is considered as the optimum RGN for upperBhima basin, which satisfied the WMO recommended value of 600-900 km2 per station.