World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2019
A Decision Support Tool for Constructing Rainfall Intensity-Duration-Frequency Relations in the Context of Climate Change
Publication: World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2019: Groundwater, Sustainability, Hydro-Climate/Climate Change, and Environmental Engineering
ABSTRACT
Intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) relations are essential for estimating extreme rainfalls for design of various hydraulic structures. The construction of these relations represents however a challenging and tedious task since it involves the uncertainty analysis of different probability models and the frequency analyses of a large amount of extreme rainfall data for different durations at a given site or over many different locations. This paper proposes hence a decision-support tool, herein referred to as SMExRain, that can readily be used to identify in an objective and systematic manner the most suitable distribution(s) for accurate and robust estimation of design rainfalls. In addition, in the context of a changing climate, the proposed tool include a statistical downscaling procedure for describing the linkage between climate predictors given by global climate models and the daily and sub-daily extreme rainfalls at a given site. Results of an illustrative application using climate simulations from different global climate models and extreme rainfall data for Ontario region, Canada, has demonstrated the accuracy and practical usefulness of the SMExRain for establishing reliable IDF relations at a given site for present and future climates.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the funding provided by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canadian FloodNet (Grant number: NETGP 451456) for this project.
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Published In
World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2019: Groundwater, Sustainability, Hydro-Climate/Climate Change, and Environmental Engineering
Pages: 237 - 250
Editors: Gregory F. Scott and William Hamilton, Ph.D.
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8234-6
Copyright
© 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: May 16, 2019
Published in print: May 16, 2019
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