optimum number of rain-gauges using factor analysis

any hydrological investigation requires enough information about precipitation. sufficient and reliable rainfall information requires rain-gauges with proper location and number. designing a network with optimum number of rain-gauges may help to achieve required information with needed accuracy and minimum cost. factor analysis, as a multivariate analysis tool, combined with traditional network design method is employed to find optimum number of rain-gauge network in this study. this method is applied on precipitation data collected from kohkiloye and boyerahmad, province in south western of iran. the results show that good advantages of factor analysis can be combined with inappropriate features of tranditional method to come up with an efficient and optimum number of stations in a region.