Computational Approach to Improving the Efficiency of River Discharge Measurement
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2016 American Society of Civil Engineers. In this work, a simple computational scheme with the pragmatic purpose of augmenting the efficiency of river discharge measurements is proposed. Observing the functional form of the velocity profile versus depth, applying polynomial regression for each vertical, and finally interpolating between the verticals, the authors develop a continuous approximation for the velocity across the entire vertical section, which turns out to be rather robust to the removal of individual measurement points. In particular, numerical data analysis shows that the number of measurements can be significantly reduced without a significant loss of accuracy of the discharge estimate. This procedure has been tested on the data obtained experimentally on the Exu, Capibaribe, and Ipojuca rivers, in the state of Pernambuco, northeast of Brazil, with different streamflow patterns exhibiting multiple local velocity maxima on and below the surface.