Regional Estimation of Floods for Ungauged Sites Using Partial Duration Series and Scaling Approach
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21, Issue 12
Abstract
One of the main obstacles in making reliable predictions of extreme events is the apparent shortness of the time series available in hydrology. There is a common advantage of both regional flood-frequency analysis and partial duration series (PDS) in which both of them allow a reduction of uncertainty by introducing more data to the site of interest. Therefore, a new regional index flood method for ungauged sites based on the PDS model is presented. The PDS model considered in this case assumes a Poisson-distributed number of threshold exceedances and generalized Pareto-distributed peak magnitudes. A new objective approach for the selection of the threshold in the context of regionalization is introduced. This approach estimates a range of reasonable thresholds (or an average annual number of events) for every site. Consequently, the regional average annual number of events can be determined as a common value for all sites in the homogeneous region. The delineation of hydrologically homogeneous regions is determined using the scaling approach. The feasibility of the proposed method was assessed using the available daily flow series from 57 watersheds in Quebec (Canada). Furthermore, the new method is compared with two existing methods for regionalization: the region of influence and canonical correlation analysis methods. Results of the numerical application indicate that the quantile estimates obtained from the new method provide the best values of the performance criteria (e.g., root-mean-square error). Hence, the new method not only eliminates subjective decisions but also greatly improves the predicted floods for ungauged sites.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education and the McGill University. The authors wish to thank Doaa Ezzat Al-Agha, Ph.D., Irrigation system management specialist, Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Egypt, for drawing the map in Fig. 2. The authors also thank Mr. Mohammed Gado, translator, Al-Salim Certified Translation, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the effort in revising the language of the manuscript. The valuable comments from the anonymous reviewers are highly appreciated.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21 • Issue 12 • December 2016
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© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 31, 2015
Accepted: Jun 10, 2016
Published online: Jul 22, 2016
Published in print: Dec 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Dec 22, 2016
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