Publisher's Synopsis
Understanding rainfall processes and their distribution in time and space, as well as their fluctuations is crucial to most hydrological analyses, thereby including hydrology of urban areas characterised by a high sensitivity to intense rainfall events. Recent improvements in monitoring techniques and data collection, such as the development and the use of weather radars have improved the capabilities of the design of urban drainage systems, also allowing their real-time management during major storm events. Moreover, the development of analysis and modelling tools opened new frontiers towards the understanding of precipitation processes, also generating significant benefit for operational urban hydrology. Following the tradition of the previous workshops organised regularly since 1989, the millennium workshop held in Pontresina, Switzerland, outlined possible ways of bridging scientific achievements and practical applications for design and forecasting purposes. A number of interesting papers derived from the contributions presented at the workshop are collected in this special issue. New measurement techniques together with the consolidation of those already existing, new insights in the structure and properties of storms, investigations on statistical predictability under the constraint of climatic fluctuations, application oriented basic research and operational urban hydrology issues are the main content of this special edition. Not only do they suggest solutions, but they also inspire new questions and shed light on the expectations from the research of this new millennium.
