Integrated Frequency Analysis of Extreme Flood Peaks and Flood Volumes Using the Regionalized Quantiles of Rainfall Depths as Auxiliary Variables
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13, Issue 3
Abstract
In its 1988 report, the U.S. National Research Council identified principles to be followed in order to improve estimation of extreme flood quantiles. In spite of the many advances attained by more recent research on extreme flood estimation, the NRC principles remain useful recommendations to be considered, which are used in the methodology to be described herein. According to the proposed method, flood peaks that have exceeded an arbitrary threshold and their associated flood volumes are modeled as a marked point process. The estimation method consists of separately estimating the marginal density function of flood volumes and the density function of flood peaks conditioned on volumes. The annual probability distribution of flood peaks can then be estimated by double integrating the product of both densities. Regionalized quantiles of rainfall depths have been used as auxiliary variables for guiding the estimation of the upper tail of the marginal density function of flood volumes by postulating simple assumptions regarding the rainfall-runoff transformation under extreme conditions. The inclusion of the regional frequency analysis of rainfall depths, for the same duration as that of flood volumes, is performed by fitting a regional two-component extreme value distribution to rainfall data observed at a number of gauging stations within a homogeneous region. This paper summarizes the basic ideas of the method and the details of its application to a watershed in southeastern Brazil.
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Acknowledgments
The writers wish to acknowledge the support of FAPEMIG (“Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais”) to this research through Grant No. UNSPECIFIEDCRA576/01. The writers would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13 • Issue 3 • March 2008
Pages: 171 - 179
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Feb 12, 2007
Accepted: Jun 8, 2007
Published online: Mar 1, 2008
Published in print: Mar 2008
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