Precipitation analysis by X-band MP radar data using Google Earth

Flood damage due to heavy rain is quite severe in Japan during the annual typhoon season, which causes death and serious destruction every year. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) of Japan started the operation of the X-band Multi-Parameter (MP) radar system in February, 2012, at 23 observation stations in Japan. Several services using the X-band MP radar data have already been provided in web-based weather maps by some agencies. However, almost all these web-based weather maps only show rainfall images of precipitation per minute given by the X-band MP radar data, the back images of which are only blank maps with prefecture border lines. The MLIT website itself also shows a similar such weather map. So, such a high spatial resolution is not effective with these weather maps. Accordingly, the present study used the X-band MP radar data to develop an accumulated rainfall monitoring system on a website, which uses Google Earth pro v.6.0 and ArcGIS 10.0 (ESRI). The accumulated rainfall data contains one hour, three hour, and six hour precipitations, and is quite crucial for disaster prediction. The present accumulated rainfall monitoring system is designed to meet the needs of agencies in both the public and private sectors, with local governments playing an especially important role in predicting and monitoring flood or landslide occurrences in their jurisdiction.