Establishing resilience-targeted prediction models of rainfall for transportation infrastructures for three demonstration regions in China

Abstract

Rainstorm is one of the global meteorological disasters that threaten the safety of transportation infrastructure and the connectivity of transportation system. Aiming to support the resilience assessment of transportation infrastructure in three representative regions: Sichuan–Chongqing, Yangtze River Delta, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei-Shandong, rainfall data over 40 years in the three regions are collected, and the temporal distribution of rainfall are analyzed. Prediction equations of rainfall are established. For the purpose of this, the probabilistic density function (PDF) is assigned to the rainfall by fitting the frequency distribution histogram. Using the assigned PDF, the rainfall data are transformed into standard normal space where regression of prediction equations is performed and the prediction accuracy is tested. The results show that: (1) The frequency of rainfall in the three regions follows a lognormal distribution based on which the prediction equations of rainfall can be established in standard normal space. The error of regression shows no remarkable dependence on self-variables, and the significance analysis indicates that the equations proposed in this paper are plausible for predicting rainfalls for the three regions. (2) The Yangtze River Delta region has a higher risk of rainstorm disaster compared to the other two regions according to the frequency of rainfall and the return period of precipitation concentration. (3) Over the period of 1980–2021, the Sichuan–Chongqing region witnessed an increase in yearly rainfall but a decrease in rainstorm disasters, whereas the other two regions experienced a consistent rise in both metrics.