Informational analysis of the Canadian National Hydrometric program monitoring network

Abstract

An information theory-based analysis was used to evaluate the Canadian National Hydrometric Network. The information theory approach used a mutual information based metric known as information quality ratio (IQR) to evaluate the reproducible information available in the network. The analysis was based on available data from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2018, and compared using average daily discharge and average daily stage data from all months, summer months, and winter months to calculate the IQR. This evaluation showed that 63–77% of hydrometric stations providing discharge data and 87–90% of hydrometric stations providing stage data, depending on the season, have an IQR equal to or greater than 0.4. These results indicate that the majority of hydrometric stations provide an average or higher level of information during the analysis period. Based on the information theory analysis, the existing hydrometric network has been shown to be average in the gauged regions of Canada, excluding the Great Plains region. These results suggest that if new stations were to be added, greater effort should be focused in the ungauged areas of Northern Canada or to bolster information content of the Great Plains.