Joint Probability of Extreme Streamflow and Its Day of Occurrence
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VIEW THE REPLYPublication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 24, Issue 8
Abstract
The magnitudes of peak streamflows and their return periods are important considerations in infrastructure design and hazard mitigation. Periods of high floods are usually associated with seasons and infrastructures and mitigation plans are designed accordingly. Floods, however, are also possible, even though at a much lower frequency, during low-flow seasons. Knowing the actual probability of an extreme event, given the day of the occurrence, can help in the implementation of nonstructural measures for minimizing flood damage, guide the design of more efficient mitigation plans, and optimize resources. Flood risks derived from annual maxima does not give any indication of the actual probability of experiencing a certain flow event in a given season, month, or day. In this note, a simple method of computing the nonexceedance probability of different flows of interest for any day of the year is presented. For example, the nonexceedance probability for a flow of in the upper reach of the Lower Mississippi River Basin, obtained from water year maxima, is 0.02, but when derived from daily flows, the nonexceedance probability of experiencing such a flow in April oscillates between 0.42 and 0.56. Hence, while a frequency duration curve derived from annual maxima is useful for structural considerations, using the complete daily time series for the computation of the daily probability of flooding provides auxiliary information that can support nonstructural flood mitigation planning.
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Data Availability Statement
The mean daily stream discharge data used in this study is available from the USGS website (https://www.waterdata.usgs.gov).
Acknowledgments
Funding for the study was provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Data analysis was performed in R (https://www.r-project.org) using the lmomco and other relevant packages. The authors thank the editor, associate editor, and four anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions (one reviewer suggested the approach presented in Fig. 8), which helped improve the original manuscript.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 24 • Issue 8 • August 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 3, 2018
Accepted: Mar 14, 2019
Published online: May 31, 2019
Published in print: Aug 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Oct 31, 2019
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