Delineating Flood-Flow Regions for the North Island of New Zealand
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21, Issue 2
Abstract
With recent acknowledgment that New Zealand requires updated guidelines in predicting rainfall and runoff, this case study compares three approaches in forming flood regions for the North Island of New Zealand. With comparison to regions in the literature, new regions are delineated on the basis of administrative boundaries, similar catchment climate and dominant topographies, and comparable linear moment ratios of the coefficient of variation (L-CV) of the annual maximum flow series. Across 204 individual flow gauging sites, the regions on the basis of L-CV were observed to provide the best predictors of flood discharges when compared with those derived using at-site analyses, with relative errors of 6.9 and 21% for 10- and 100-year peak discharges, respectively. Although these regions are delineated on the basis of spatial proximity and similar hydrologic flood flow regimes, concerns are raised regarding the homogeneity of these regions as a whole. Although further breakdowns of regions could be beneficial, these regions are still recommended for use in ungauged catchments over those previously published.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who helped in the considerable improvement of this paper. The following people are acknowledged for their catchment advice and provision of flow data: Alan Bee (Northland Regional Council), Phil White and Francess Mitchell (Auckland Council), Doug Stewart (Environment Waikato), Glenn Ellery (Environment Bay of Plenty), Greg Hall (Gisborne District Council), Darryl Squires, Rob Christie, and Rob Waldron (Hawke’s Bay Regional Council), Fiona Jansma (Taranaki Regional Council), Blair Sowman and Andy Cawthorn (Horizons Regional Council), and Wendy Purdon (Greater Wellington Regional Council).
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21 • Issue 2 • February 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 24, 2015
Accepted: Jul 23, 2015
Published online: Sep 7, 2015
Published in print: Feb 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Feb 7, 2016
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