INTEGRATING METEOSAT SATELLITE AND RAIN-GAUGE INFORMATION TO ESTIMATERAINFALL PATTERNS

This paper presents the development and the application of techniques for the integration of information coming from Meteosat satellite imag es and rain-gauge measurements, with the purpose of estimating the rai nfall pattern on a certain river basin. The proposed integration techn iques are based on the definition of a data coherence problem and on t he application of mathematical programming methods. The quality of the estimation procedure is evaluated by using a rainfall/runoff model fo r the basin which allows the generation of a hydrograph at a given sec tion of the river, on the basis of the above estimated rainfall patter n in the upstream watershed. The comparison of the hydrograph with the observed one allows the parametric tuning of the integration procedur e.