IDF curves for the Viacha weather station, La Paz city

Juan Carlos Quispe Mamani

Abstract

The majority of the meteorological stations in the country do not have rain gauge data information as well as rain gauge data. The problem is recurrent in not having the intensities of rainfall, because these data are essential for the design of different types of hydraulic works, roads, irrigation systems, etc. For this reason, the objective of this research work is to determine the IDF curves (intensity, duration and frequency) from rainfall data obtained from rain gauges. The work was carried out at the Viacha Meteorological Station, located in the municipality of Viacha, province of Ingavi, La Paz City, Bolivia. To fulfill the objective, the quantitative research approach was used, the procedure being the following: collection of precipitation data, estimation of missing data, analysis of annual and monthly precipitation, estimation of model parameters and obtaining of curves IDF. Based on the analysis of rainfall, the following results were obtained: the average annual precipitation at the Station was 573.29 ± 158.90 mm, with a minimum value of 361.30 mm and a maximum value of 1108.90 mm. 52.67% of the rains occur in the months of January, February and March. By means of the statistical analysis it was possible to verify that the monthly precipitation of the Station is highly correlated with that of Choquenaira; with the discretization of the rains, the constants of the IDF curves were obtained, k = 21.142; m = 0.456 and n = 0.401; with these parameters the curves were found for return periods of 1 year, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 years.