Record Length Requirements for Annual Maximum Flood Series
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 15, Issue 9
Abstract
A basic problem in evaluating the accuracy of an annual maximum series is knowing the sample size that will provide a specific level of relative accuracy. Current methods are inadequate and do not consider all of the necessary variables needed to describe the relationship between return period, record length, skew, and accuracy. The objective of this work was to provide a graphical approach that will enable a user to assess the expected accuracy in 2-, 10-, and 100-year magnitudes expected from a log-Pearson Type III analysis. A Monte Carlo simulation was used to determine the relative errors for the upper 80, 90, and 95% levels of confidence for the 2-, 10-, and 100-year floods. Analyses of the graphs show that accuracy decreases with increases in return period and skew. The results show good agreement to an example problem from Bulletin 17B.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 15 • Issue 9 • September 2010
Pages: 704 - 707
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 6, 2009
Accepted: Jan 4, 2010
Published online: Aug 13, 2010
Published in print: Sep 2010
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