Quantifying the Uncertainty of Return Period and Risk in Hydrologic Design
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 5
Abstract
Concepts of risk and uncertainty are commonly used for designing and evaluating flood-related hydraulic structures. A general framework for estimating the uncertainty of the return period and risk is presented based on first-order analysis of uncertainty for determining the variance of the return period and risk of failure and the methods of moments, probability weighted moments, and maximum likelihood. The general method is illustrated using the exponential and Gumbel distributions. The derived variance of the return period is a function of the sample size and the nonexceedance probability , while that of the risk is function of , , and design life . Simulation experiments were performed to analyze the behavior of the variance of risk for various values of , , and . They showed that the derived variances of the risk can be applicable for a wide range of conditions, particularly for sample sizes bigger than 50 and design lives smaller or equal to 50. An example is included to illustrate the applicability of the proposed concepts and equations.
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Acknowledgments
The first author wishes to acknowledge the support from the NSF Grant on Uncertainty and Risk Analysis Under Extreme Hydrologic Events. The support of the Internal Research Fund of Yonsei University is also gratefully acknowledged. The Swiss Federal Office for Water and Geology provided the annual flood records of the Aare at Bern-Schönau.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 5 • May 2013
Pages: 518 - 526
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 5, 2011
Accepted: Mar 14, 2012
Published online: Mar 17, 2012
Published in print: May 1, 2013
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