Rainfall events prediction using rule-based fuzzy inference system

We are interested in rainfall events prediction by applying rule-based reasoning and fuzzy logic. Five parameters: relative humidity, total cloud cover, wind direction, temperature and surface pressure are the input variables for our model, each has three membership functions. The data used is twenty years METAR data for Cairo airport station (HECA) [1972-1992] 30 degrees 3' 29 '' N. 31 degrees 13' 44 '' E. and five years METAR data for Mersa Matruh station (HEMM) 31 degrees 20' 0 '' N, 27 degrees 13' 0 '' E. Different models for each station were constructed depending on the available data sets. Among the overall 243 possibilities we have based our models on one hundred eighteen fuzzy IF THEN rules and fuzzy reasoning. The output variable which has four membership functions, takes values from zero to one hundred corresponding to the percentage for rainfall events given for every hourly data. We used two skill scores to verify our results, the Brier score and the Friction score. The results are in high agreements with the recorded data for the stations with increasing in output values towards the real time rain events. All implementation are done with MATLAB 7.9. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.