ABSTRACT
In water resources applications, intensity of rainfall is a critical parameter influencing many design outcomes. Design rainfalls are the rainfall intensities to be considered for the purpose of design in a particular location. These rainfalls are derived from rigorous statistical analyses of historical recorded rainfall data for a particular area. The Weather/Meteorology department in an individual country is responsible for the derivations of such design rainfalls. Temporal pattern provides a likely distribution of design rainfall across the whole rainfall period. Temporal distribution has a significant impact in the calculations of runoff produced from a catchment for a particular design rainfall having higher duration. In some cases where good quality of enough measured discharge data is available, statistical analysis is performed on measured discharge data and ‘design discharge’ is directly evaluated from the measured discharge data.
