Abstract
Having reliable water monitoring networks is an essential component of water resources and environmental management. A standardized process for the design of water monitoring networks does not exist with the exception of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) general guidelines about the minimum network density. While one of the major challenges in the design of optimal hydrometric networks has been establishing design objectives, information theory has been successfully adopted to network design problems by providing measures of the information content that can be deliverable from a station or a network. This review firstly summarizes the common entropy terms that have been used in water monitoring network designs. Then, this paper deals with the recent applications of the entropy concept for water monitoring network designs, which are categorized into (1) precipitation; (2) streamflow and water level; (3) water quality; and (4) soil moisture and groundwater networks. The integrated design method for multivariate monitoring networks is also covered. Despite several issues, entropy theory has been well suited to water monitoring network design. However, further work is still required to provide design standards and guidelines for operational use.
Highlights
Water monitoring networks account for all aspects of the water-related measurement system including precipitation, streamflow, water quality, groundwater, soil moisture, etc. [1,2,3]
It is evident that successful water management cannot be achieved without proper water monitoring networks
After the pioneering invention of information theory in the 1940s, entropy concepts have been applied in various applications with recent efforts on network design problems
Summary
Water monitoring networks account for all aspects of the water-related measurement system including precipitation, streamflow, water quality, groundwater, soil moisture, etc. [1,2,3]. Mishra and Coulibaly [10] were able to draw several conclusions about the importance of high quality hydrometric data for water resource management that remain valid They concluded that one of the most promising approaches for network design was the application of entropy methods highlighting early studies using the principle of maximum entropy and information transfer. To the best of our knowledge, no review exists that has focused on entropy applications to water monitoring network design previous to the 2009 study by Mishra and Coulibaly [10]. There has been considerable progress in the application of entropy theory to monitoring network design following the previous review, including new entropy-based measures, optimization techniques and approaches to estimating information content at ungauged stations. The term optimal network is to be used only if the network consists of optimal locations of stations that are identified by the actual use of an optimization technique
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