Geostatistically based optimization of a rainfall monitoring network extension: case of the climatically heterogeneous Tunisia

Rainfall data are an essential input for many simulation models. In fact, these latter have a decisive role in the development and application of rational water policies. Since the accuracy of the simulation depends strongly on the available data, the task of optimizing the monitoring network is of great importance. In this paper, an application is presented aiming at the evaluation of a precipitation monitoring network by predicting monthly, seasonal, and interannual average rainfall. The method given here is based on the theory of the regionalized variables using the well-known geostatistical variance reduction method. The procedure that involves different analysis methods of the available data, such as estimation of the interpolation uncertainty and data cross validation, is applied to a case study data set in Tunisia in order to demonstrate the potential of improvement of the observation network quality. Root mean square error values are the criteria for evaluating rainfall estimation and network performance is discussed based on the kriging variance reduction. Based on this study, it was concluded that some sites should be dropped to eliminate redundancy and some others need to be added to the existing network essentially in the center and the south to have a more informative network.