The observed rainfall may be different along with the altitude of rain gauge, resulting in the fact that the characteristics of
rainfall events occurred in urban or mountainous areas are different. Due to the mountainous effects, in higher altitude, the
uncertainty involved in the rainfall observation gets higher so that the density of rain gauges should be more dense.
Basically, a methodology for the rain gauge network evaluation, considering this altitude effect of rain gauges can account
for the mountainous effects and becomes an important step for forecasting flash flood and calibrating of the radar rainfall.
For this reason, in this study, we suggest a methodology for rain gauge network evaluation with consideration of the rain
gauge’s altitude. To explore the density of rain gauges at each level of altitude, the Equal-Altitude-Ratio of the density of
rain gauges, which is based on the fixed amount of elevation and the Equal-Area-Ratio of the density of rain gauges, which
is based on the fixed amount of basin area are designed. After these two methods are applied to a real watershed, it is
found that the Equal-Area-Ratio generates better results for evaluation of a rain gauge network with consideration of rain
gauge’s altitude than the Equal-Altitude-Ratio does. In addition, for comparison between the soundness of rain gauge
networks in other watersheds, the Coefficient of Variation (CV) of the rain gauge density by the Equal-Area-Ratio is served
as the index for the evenness of the distribution of the rain gauge’s altitude. The suggested method is applied to the five
large watersheds in Korea and it is found that rain gauges installed in a watershed having less value of the CV shows
more evenly distributed than the ones in a watershed having higher value of the CV.