Abstract
With the exponential increasing of mobile phone users, the CML network in West Africa is growing, and thus providing a high potential for CML-derived precipitation measurements. In this work we use the performances data of the CMLs to determine the rainfall quantities of the rainy event which marked the memory of the inhabitants of the capital Ouagadougou on September 1<sup>st</sup>, 2009. In this study we use the attenuation of a microwave link to establish the rain rate. The working frequency is 13 GHz, the path length 7.5 Km and vertical polarization. The time series of attenuation are transformed into rain rates and compared with rain gauge data. The method has successful in quantifying the rainfall. The correlation between 1 hour data of the microwave link and the rain gauge is 0.63. The cumulative rainfall bias during the event less than 5%. These results demonstrate the opportunity to use the microwave backhauling in mobile network to assess rainfall in Africa in this context where the hydrometeorological risk increases every day.
Highlights
Flash floods have become recurrent since the 2000s in the city of Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, between 2002 and 2012 Ouagadougou experienced many floods
If we know the importance of rainfall for agriculture, we deplores the disasters that they cause during extreme events, such as the flooding of September,1st 2009 in Ouagadougou or nearly 264 mm of rain was measured in just 10 hours to the station synoptic of airport of ouagadougou
Commercial microwave links (CML) from telecommunication networks have been suggested as a novel source of rainfall information [1,2,3,4,5,6,7], which could provide quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE)
Summary
Flash floods have become recurrent since the 2000s in the city of Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, between 2002 and 2012 Ouagadougou experienced many floods. Rainfall heights associated with flooding range from 43.8 mm to 263.5 mm. These floods have resulted in loss of lives, disaster victims, wounded, house collapses, and many other serious damage to the economic infrastructures. The images below illustrates the extent of the damage that the capital of Burkina faso experienced this September, 1st 2009. In this city, the observation network is almost non-existent, but this is not the case of mobile phones antennas.
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