3. METHODOLOGY
3.1 Rainfall data collection and analysis
Monthly rainfall data during the year 1976 to 2004 from 308 stations of the Thai Meteorological Department (TMD) stations distributed throughout the study area were collected and digitally encoded into GIS database. Mean annual rainfall of each station was calculated for 29 years. Median of mean annual rainfall of each year wasselected as a representative of each station during this study periods. Thus, there are 308 values preparing for interpolation.
Exploratory analysis of rainfall data was examined to explore the frequency distribution of rainfall and the local characteristics of spatial autocorrelation of rainfall in different location over the study period. The interpolation of mean annual rainfall for the 29 years period was performed using the Kriging Method to get a spatial pattern of rainfall data. The appropriate variogram model for rainfall data was the Gaussian model because the variation was very smooth and the nugget variance was very small compared to the spatially dependent random variation (Burrough et al, 1998). Cross validation was used to check for measuring the residual between the point and the surface created.
3.2 Calculation of coefficient of variance (CV)
A measurement of reliability of rainfall at each station for the study periods was calculated using CV. High CV values indicate a large variation in rainfall over the study period (Saenjan et al, 1990). The formula for CV is;