Research Papers - Department of Civil Engineering

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    PublicationOpen Access
    Spatiotemporal rainfall variability and trend analysis over Mahaweli Basin, Sri Lanka
    (Springer, Cham, 2022-02-07) Rathnayake, U; Pawar, U
    The hydrometeorological characteristics of the Mahaweli Basin are infuenced by rainfall distribution. For that reason, it is signifcant to identify spatiotemporal rainfall fuctuations and trends over the Mahaweli Basin. Accordingly, rainfall data from 1990 to 2019 available for the 15 raingauge stations were analyzed for rainfall variability and trends. Serial autocorrelation was checked before applying rainfall time series data to Mann–Kendall (MK) test. The result exhibited no serial autocorrelation in the data. The MK test, Sen’s slope estimator (SSE), and innovative trend analysis (ITA) were applied to recognize rainfall trends. The inverse distance weighting (IDW) interpolation method was applied to show the spatial pattern of rainfall characteristics with the support of ArcGIS 10.1. Some fuctuations were observed in the rainfall over the 30 years with decreasing and increasing trends. Nevertheless, signifcant trends in the annual rainfall were noted for Bandarawela (+15.7 mm), Ledgerwatta (+40.3 mm), Duckwari (−36.3 mm), and Bakamuna (24.3 mm). At the basin scale, no signifcant trends were noted in rainfall of the Mahaweli Basin. The rainfall trend analysis results obtained by ITA have validated the results of the nonparametric test. Therefore, the analysis showed that despite the seasonal variations in rainfall over the Mahaweli Basin, rainfall is regular, and results acquired by MK test, SSE, and ITA methods are reliable.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Impact of climate variability on hydropower generation in an un-gauged catchment: Erathna run-of-the-river hydropower plant, Sri Lanka
    (Springer International Publishing, 2019-04) Perera, A; Rathnayaka, U. S
    Impact of climate change or climate variability on water resources is an exceedingly concerned issue. Hydropower development is one of the most affected industries due to the climatic variability. Therefore, this paper presents the promising results from a study of the impact of climate variability on hydropower generation of Erathna run-of-the-river (ROR) hydropower plant located in Rathnapura district, Sri Lanka. This study was based on surrounded rain gauges outside the catchment as Erathna catchment area is an un-gauged catchment. 30-year rainfall trend analysis from 1988 to 2017 was done using Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator tests to predict the available trends. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to investigate the relationship between rainfall and Erathna power generation. Results show negative trends for annual rainfalls in several rain gauges, while seasonal trend analyses support that observation. July is the most critical month for most of the rain gauges around the catchment. The results also show a good correlation between the rainfalls and power generation. Therefore, the results conclude the importance of rainfall trend analysis in un-gauged catchments and its forecasting capacity of water resources usage in hydropower development.