Short time step continuous rainfall modeling and simulation of extreme events

•A stochastic point rainfall model is proposed for high temporal resolutions.•Simulation of the dependence structure between rainfall characteristics is crucial.•The inclusion of seasonality and marginal events is as well important.•The model is capable of reproducing rainfall along with urban flooding behaviour.•Overall the performance of the model is acceptable compared to the design practice.

The design, planning, operation and overall assessment of urban drainage systems require long and continuous rain series in a high temporal resolution. Unfortunately, the availability of this data is usually short. Nevertheless a precipitation model could be used to tackle this shortcoming; therefore it is in the aim of this study to present a stochastic point precipitation model to reproduce average rainfall event properties along with extreme values. For this purpose a model is proposed to generate long synthetic series of rainfall for a temporal resolution of 5 min. It is based on an alternating renewal framework and events are characterized by variables describing durations, amounts and peaks.A group of 24 stations located in the north of Germany is used to set up and test the model. The adequate modeling of joint behaviour of rainfall amount and duration is found to be essential for reproducing the observed properties, especially for the extreme events. Copulas are advantageous tools for modeling these variables jointly; however caution must be taken in the selection of the proper copula. The inclusion of seasonality and small events is as well tested and found to be useful. The model is directly validated by generating long synthetic time series and comparing them with observed ones. An indirect validation is as well performed based on a fictional urban hydrological system. The proposed model is capable of reproducing seasonal behaviour and main characteristics of the rainfall events including extremes along with urban flooding and overflow behaviour. Overall the performance of the model is acceptable compared to the design practice. The proposed model is simple to interpret, fast to implement and to transfer to other regions, whilst showing acceptable results.