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Application of advanced trend analysis techniques with clustering approach for analysing rainfall trend and identification of homogenous rainfall regions in Delhi metropolitan city

  • Environmental Impacts and Consequences of Urban Sprawl
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Abstract

In the era of global urbanization, the cities across the world are experiencing significant change in the climate pattern. However, analysing the trend and pattern of rainfall over the urban areas has a number of challenges such as availability of long-term data as well as the uneven distribution of rain-gauge stations. In this research, the rainfall regionalization approach has been applied along with the advanced statistical techniques for analysing the trend and pattern of rainfall in the Delhi metropolitan city. Fuzzy C-means and K-means clustering techniques have been applied for the identification of homogeneous rainfall regions while innovative trend analysis (ITA) along with the family of Mann–Kendall (MK) tests has been applied for the trend analysis of rainfall. The result shows that in all rain-gauge stations of Delhi, an increasing trend in rainfall has been recorded during 1991–2018. But the rate of increase was low as the trend slope of ITA and Sen’s slope in MK tests are low, which varies between 0.03 and 0.05 and 0.01 and 0.16, respectively. Furthermore, none of the rain-gauge stations have experienced a monotonic trend in rainfall as the null hypothesis has not been rejected (p value > 0.05) for any stations. Furthermore, the study shows that ITA has a better performance than the family of MK tests. The findings of this study may be utilized for the urban flood mitigation and solving other issues related to water resources in Delhi and other cities.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University for funding this work through Research Group under grant number RGP2/169/43. The lead author is thankful to the University Grant Commission (UGC), India, for availing the senior research fellowship during this research. The authors are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments which helped to improve the article significantly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, 110025, India

    Shahfahad, Swapan Talukdar, Tanmoy Das, Mohd Waseem Naikoo & Atiqur Rahman

  2. Department of Disaster Management, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, 5400, Bangladesh

    Abu Reza Md. Towfiqul Islam

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia

    Javed Mallick

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  1. Shahfahad
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  2. Swapan Talukdar
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Contributions

S and ST designed the study and were responsible for the data collection as well as analysis of the data and wrote the initial draft; TD and MWN was responsible for the data analysis, data curation and modelling as well as editing of the initial draft; ARMTI and JM helped in the data preparation as well as provided technical support; AR supervised the project as well as reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Atiqur Rahman.

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Shahfahad, Talukdar, S., Islam, A.R.M.T. et al. Application of advanced trend analysis techniques with clustering approach for analysing rainfall trend and identification of homogenous rainfall regions in Delhi metropolitan city. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 106898–106916 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22235-1

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