Similarity indices of meteo-climatic gauging stations for missing data handling: definition and comparison with the MICE method

The meteo-climatic datasets are at the basis of a great deal of studies on environmental state and its consequent management. In this frame, the completeness of meteo-climatic datasets is required for accurate and reliable analysis. Unfortunately, completeness is a rare in practice and, consequently, a preliminary treatment for filling in all gaps is needed. In this work, two intuitive and easy procedures for handling missing data are presented based on the "similarity station" concept. Finally, a comparison between the proposed methods and the Multiple Imputation Chained Equations, which is the state of the art in the field of missing data handling, has been carried out.