Civil Engineering Association

Progress in the design of hydrologic-data networks

The design of hydrologic-data networks is a topic that previously has not been raised to the status of a separate article in the U.S. National Reports to the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. However, three articles (Matalas, 1975; Peck, 1975; Schwarz, 1975) in the 1970–1974 Report considered it significant enough to be included as specific sections. Thus, because of the novelty of this article, some references will be made to work performed prior to the report period of 1975–1978 for the sake of completeness.

The collection of hydrologie data has been perceived as a design problem only within the past few decades. Although some earlier work had been done in the area of precipitation gaging networks, Langbein (1954) presented the first comprehensive description of what needed to be done to manage objectively a hydrologic-data program.