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Flood type specific construction of synthetic design hydrographs
Author(s) -
Brunner Manuela I.,
Viviroli Daniel,
Sikorska Anna E.,
Vannier Olivier,
Favre AnneCatherine,
Seibert Jan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1002/2016wr019535
Subject(s) - hydrograph , flood myth , flash flood , 100 year flood , hydrology (agriculture) , environmental science , flood forecasting , hec hms , flood risk assessment , geology , geography , geotechnical engineering , archaeology
Accurate estimates of flood peaks, corresponding volumes, and hydrographs are required to design safe and cost‐effective hydraulic structures. In this paper, we propose a statistical approach for the estimation of the design variables peak and volume by constructing synthetic design hydrographs for different flood types such as flash‐floods, short‐rain floods, long‐rain floods, and rain‐on‐snow floods. Our approach relies on the fitting of probability density functions to observed flood hydrographs of a certain flood type and accounts for the dependence between peak discharge and flood volume. It makes use of the statistical information contained in the data and retains the process information of the flood type. The method was tested based on data from 39 mesoscale catchments in Switzerland and provides catchment specific and flood type specific synthetic design hydrographs for all of these catchments. We demonstrate that flood type specific synthetic design hydrographs are meaningful in flood‐risk management when combined with knowledge on the seasonality and the frequency of different flood types.