Copula-Based Analysis of Flood Peak Level and Duration: Two Case Studies in Taihu Basin, China
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 23, Issue 6
Abstract
Recently, several bivariate and multivariate methods have been used to analyze the relationship of flood peak discharges with corresponding hydrograph volumes and durations in many basins. In some flat tidal areas, such as the Taihu Basin of China, the flood peak level and the corresponding flood duration have received more attention than the flood peak discharge and other flood characteristics in flood control and flood management. In this study, avoiding the complex problem of positive-negative flows, a pragmatic approach for bivariate flood frequency analyses based on flood peak level data is proposed. Commonly used bivariate copulas and techniques for fitting such copulas are applied to analyze the correlation between flood peak levels and durations based on peak-over-threshold flood series in Pingwang and Wuzhen. The goodness-of-fit test shows that the extreme-value copulas are not suitable for these two cases. Along with the tail dependence analysis, the Student copula () is chosen as the best-fitting model. A comparison between the joint return period (years) associated with the event ( or ) obtained through the Student copula () and other bivariate copulas demonstrates that ignoring the tail dependence results in a significant overestimate of flood risk. The joint return periods of arbitrary combinations of flood peak levels and flood durations are obtained through the final fitted copula. Furthermore, a comparison between the cumulative probability curves of flood peak levels obtained through different univariate and bivariate methods confirms the correctness of this work.
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Acknowledgments
This research is financially supported by projects funded by the Chinese National Science and Technology Pillar Program during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period (No. 2014BAL05B02) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2016kj024). The authors sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, suggestions, and careful reading of paper, which have led to a much-improved version.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 23 • Issue 6 • June 2018
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©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 10, 2017
Accepted: Nov 29, 2017
Published online: Apr 11, 2018
Published in print: Jun 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Sep 11, 2018
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