About the PhD thesis

Weather radar nowcasting has become an essential technique in urban drainage applications. Accurate forecasting of precipitation in urban areas and load on the drainage system may lead to better utilization of the existing drainage system capacity, early warnings of pluvial flooding and reduced costs of flooding.

To produce valid precipitation estimation from weather radar measurements, bias adjustment against ground observations is crucial. However, low density and high inhomogeneity of ground observations reduce the accuracy of weather radar precipitation estimation and thus nowcasting of convective storm events with high spatial variability. Furthermore, the currently applied method for weather radar nowcasting predicts convective rainfall with rapid changes of dynamics with limited accuracy. Since the exceeded capacity of urban drainage systems is often caused by such storm events, there is a need for developing nowcasting methods optimized for predicting the consequences of convective storms.

This PhD study aims to develop weather radar nowcast methods dedicated to urban hydrology and urban drainage applications.