Evolution of Flood Frequency Analysis with Bulletin 17
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 12, Issue 3
Abstract
The current methodology recommended for flood-frequency analyses by U.S. Federal agencies is presented in Bulletin 17B. Bulletin 17 was first published in 1976, minor corrections were made in 1977 resulting in Bulletin 17A, which was later succeeded by Bulletin 17B published in 1982. Bulletin 17B sought to resolve ambiguities in the recommended procedures, including the treatment of low outliers, and the use of both regional skew and historical flood information. As the 25th anniversary of the publication of Bulletin 17B approaches, this paper provides a discussion and evaluation of the procedures that document recommends. The fields of hydrology and flood frequency analysis have substantially evolved since Bulletin 17 was first published. New techniques are now available which should become part of these standard procedures. A comparison is provided which demonstrates how the standard and weighted Bulletin 17B quantile estimators perform relative to alternative LP3 quantile estimators that also make use of regional information.
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Acknowledgments
The writers greatly acknowledge support provided by Water Resources Institute Internship Award No. 02HQGR0128 by the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior. Comments and encouragement provided by Timothy Cohn, Martin Becker, Will Thomas, and Beth Faber are gratefully acknowledged.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 12 • Issue 3 • May 2007
Pages: 283 - 297
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 11, 2005
Accepted: Oct 6, 2006
Published online: May 1, 2007
Published in print: May 2007
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