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Engineering >> 2023, Volume 21, Issue 2 doi: 10.1016/j.eng.2021.11.021

Estimating Rainfall Intensity Using an Image-Based Deep Learning Model

a College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University, China
b Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong 999077, China
c KWR Water Research Institute, Nieuwegein 3430 BB, The Netherlands
d Centre for Water Systems, University of Exeter, North Park Road, Exeter EX4 4QF, United Kingdom
e Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Malaysia
f Department of Water Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft 2600 GA, The Netherlands

Received: 2021-07-09 Revised: 2021-09-27 Accepted: 2021-11-15 Available online: 2022-01-27

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Abstract

Urban flooding is a major issue worldwide, causing huge economic losses and serious threats to public safety. One promising way to mitigate its impacts is to develop a real-time flood risk management system; however, building such a system is often challenging due to the lack of high spatiotemporal rainfall data. While some approaches (i.e., ground rainfall stations or radar and satellite techniques) are available to measure and/or predict rainfall intensity, it is difficult to obtain accurate rainfall data with a desirable spatiotemporal resolution using these methods. This paper proposes an image-based deep learning model to estimate urban rainfall intensity with high spatial and temporal resolution. More specifically, a convolutional neural network (CNN) model called the image-based rainfall CNN (irCNN) model is developed using rainfall images collected from existing dense sensors (i.e., smart phones or transportation cameras) and their corresponding measured rainfall intensity values. The trained irCNN model is subsequently employed to efficiently estimate rainfall intensity based on the sensors' rainfall images. Synthetic rainfall data and real rainfall images are respectively utilized to explore the irCNN's accuracy in theoretically and practically simulating rainfall intensity. The results show that the irCNN model provides rainfall estimates with a mean absolute percentage error ranging between 13.5% and 21.9%, which exceeds the performance of other state-of-the-art modeling techniques in the literature. More importantly, the main feature of the proposed irCNN is its low cost in efficiently acquiring high spatiotemporal urban rainfall data. The irCNN model provides a promising alternative for estimating urban rainfall intensity, which can greatly facilitate the development of urban flood risk management in a real-time manner.

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