Evaluation of the Index-Flood Approach Related Regional Frequency Analysis Procedures
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21, Issue 1
Abstract
Index-flood related regional frequency analysis (RFA) procedures are in use by hydrologists to estimate design quantiles of hydrological extreme events at data sparse/ungauged locations in river basins. There is a dearth of attempts to establish which among those procedures is better for RFA in the -moment framework. This paper evaluates the performance of the conventional index flood (CIF), the logarithmic index flood (LIF), and two variants of the population index flood (PIF) procedures in estimating flood quantiles for ungauged locations by Monte Carlo simulation experiments and a case study on watersheds in Indiana in the U.S. To evaluate the PIF procedure, -moment formulations are developed for implementing the procedure in situations where the regional frequency distribution (RFD) is the generalized logistic (GLO), generalized Pareto (GPA), generalized normal (GNO) or Pearson type III (PE3), as those formulations are unavailable. Results indicate that one of the variants of the PIF procedure, which utilizes the regional information on the first two -moments is more effective than the CIF and LIF procedures. The improvement in quantile estimation using the variant of PIF procedure as compared with the CIF procedure is significant when the RFD is a generalized extreme value, GLO, GNO, or PE3, and marginal when it is GPA.
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Acknowledgments
We express our appreciation to the three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their constructive review, which resulted in improving the quality of this work.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21 • Issue 1 • January 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 10, 2014
Accepted: May 13, 2015
Published online: Jul 3, 2015
Discussion open until: Dec 3, 2015
Published in print: Jan 1, 2016
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