Comparison of stationary and non-stationary frequency models for assessing design discharges in variable climate: north-west England case study

Author(s):  
Sina Hesarkazzazi ◽  
Rezgar Arabzadeh ◽  
Mohsen Hajibabaei ◽  
Wolfgang Rauch ◽  
Thomas R. Kjeldsen ◽  
...  

<p>Successive occurrence of floods across north-west England over the course of the past few years has resulted in the need for the local authorities and decision makers to (re-) assess several flood management schemes. However, ongoing decision-making on how flood control measures are constructed, is frequently still made on the basis of the assumption that the flood characteristics of catchments have remained constant over time (i.e., stationarity). To verify the validity of this assumptions, non-parametric tests alongside change-permitting flood frequency frameworks based on Generalized Logistic distribution model (as the recommended model in the UK catchments) have been applied to a dataset of extreme peak river flow measurements across the region (39 catchments with up to 75 years of records). Allowing the location parameter of the model to change linearly with time, cumulative annual rainfall and cumulative annual temperature as covariates, one stationary as well as six non-stationary models have been introduced. The regional non-stationary frequency results indicate a notable improvement over the stationary predictions, estimating design flood quantiles (i.e., 100-year events) up to 75% larger than classic stationary estimates. Moreover, the vast majority of rivers demonstrate statistically significant changes (mainly driven by cumulative annual rainfall), specifically in the late 1990s. This indicates that non-stationary models should be taken into consideration, along with the traditional stationary ones to help understanding the changes in the peak river flow regimes across the north-west England.</p>

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Miller ◽  
T. R. Kjeldsen ◽  
J. Hannaford ◽  
D. G. Morris

In November 2009, record-breaking rainfall resulted in severe, damaging flooding in Cumbria, in the north-west of England. This paper presents an analysis of the river flows and lake levels experienced during the event. Comparison with previous maxima shows the exceptional nature of this event, with new maximum flows being established at 17 river flow gauging stations, particularly on catchments influenced by lakes. The return periods of the flood peaks are estimated using the latest Flood Estimation Handbook statistical procedures. Results demonstrate that the event has had a considerable impact on estimates of flood frequency and associated uncertainty. Analysis of lake levels suggests that their record high levels reduced their attenuating effect, significantly affecting the timing and magnitude of downstream peaks. The peak flow estimate of 700 m3s–1 at Workington, the lowest station on the Derwent, was examined in the context of upstream inputs and was found to be plausible. The results of this study have important implications for the future development of flood frequency estimation methods for the UK. It is recommended that further research is undertaken on the role of abnormally elevated lake levels and that flood frequency estimation procedures in lake-influenced catchments are reviewed.


Author(s):  
Arijit Ganguly ◽  
Ranjana Ray Chaudhuri ◽  
Prateek Sharma

The current study is carried out to determine the potential trend of rainfall and assess its significance in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh. Rainfall is a key characteristic of any watershed which plays a significant role in flood frequency, flood control studies and water planning and management. In this case study,mean monthly rainfall has been analysed to determine the variability in magnitude over the period 1950-2005.  Trend in mean monthly precipitation data and mean seasonal trends are analysed using Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimation for the data period 1950-2005. Analysis of monthly trend in precipitation shows negative trend for the months of July, August, September and October in all the rain gauge stations. However, the falling trend is significant for the month of August for Dharamshala(0.05 level of significance). Interestingly the month of June shows rising trend of rainfall in all the stations, however, at Dharamshala the trend is significant (0.01 level of significance). The winter rainfall in the month of January and February record decreasing trend, with DeraGobipur and Kangra recording significant decreasing trend for the month of January at 0.01 level of significance and 0.05 level of significance respectively. Trend analysis for annual rainfall data shows significant negative trend for Dharamshala.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (15) ◽  
pp. 4406
Author(s):  
Tadaharu Ishikawa ◽  
Hiroshi Senoo

The development process and flood control effects of the open-levee system, which was constructed from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries, on the Kurobe Alluvial Fan—a large alluvial fan located on the Japan Sea Coast of Japan’s main island—was evaluated using numerical flow simulation. The topography for the numerical simulation was determined from an old pictorial map in the 18th century and various maps after the 19th century, and the return period of the flood hydrograph was determined to be 10 years judging from the level of civil engineering of those days. The numerical results suggested the followings: The levees at the first stage were made to block the dominant divergent streams to gather the river flows together efficiently; by the completed open-levee system, excess river flow over the main channel capacity was discharged through upstream levee openings to old stream courses which were used as temporary floodways, and after the flood peak, a part of the flooded water returned to the main channel through the downstream levee openings. It is considered that the ideas of civil engineers of those days to control the floods exceeding river channel capacity, embodied in their levee arrangement, will give us hints on how to control the extraordinary floods that we should face in the near future when the scale of storms will increase due to the global climate change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Otman EL Mountassir ◽  
Mohammed Bahir ◽  
Driss Ouazar ◽  
Abdelghani Chehbouni ◽  
Paula M. Carreira

AbstractThe city of Essaouira is located along the north-west coast of Morocco, where groundwater is the main source of drinking, domestic and agricultural water. In recent decades, the salinity of groundwater has increased, which is why geochemical techniques and environmental isotopes have been used to determine the main sources of groundwater recharge and salinization. The hydrochemical study shows that for the years 1995, 2007, 2016 and 2019, the chemical composition of groundwater in the study area consists of HCO3–Ca–Mg, Cl–Ca–Mg, SO4–Ca and Cl–Na chemical facies. The results show that from 1995 to 2019, electrical conductivity increased and that could be explained by a decrease in annual rainfall in relation to climate change and water–rock interaction processes. Geochemical and environmental isotope data show that the main geochemical mechanisms controlling the hydrochemical evolution of groundwater in the Cenomanian–Turonian aquifer are the water–rock interaction and the cation exchange process. The diagram of δ2H = 8 * δ18O + 10 shows that the isotopic contents are close or above to the Global Meteoric Water Line, which suggests that the aquifer is recharged by precipitation of Atlantic origin. In conclusion, groundwater withdrawal should be well controlled to prevent groundwater salinization and further intrusion of seawater due to the lack of annual groundwater recharge in the Essaouira region.


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1349-1363 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Nijssen ◽  
A. Schumann ◽  
M. Pahlow ◽  
B. Klein

Abstract. As a result of the severe floods in Europe at the turn of the millennium, the ongoing shift from safety oriented flood control towards flood risk management was accelerated. With regard to technical flood control measures it became evident that the effectiveness of flood control measures depends on many different factors, which cannot be considered with single events used as design floods for planning. The multivariate characteristics of the hydrological loads have to be considered to evaluate complex flood control measures. The effectiveness of spatially distributed flood control systems differs for varying flood events. Event-based characteristics such as the spatial distribution of precipitation, the shape and volume of the resulting flood waves or the interactions of flood waves with the technical elements, e.g. reservoirs and flood polders, result in varying efficiency of these systems. Considering these aspects a flood control system should be evaluated with a broad range of hydrological loads to get a realistic assessment of its performance under different conditions. The consideration of this variety in flood control planning design was one particular aim of this study. Hydrological loads were described by multiple criteria. A statistical characterization of these criteria is difficult, since the data base is often not sufficient to analyze the variety of possible events. Hydrological simulations were used to solve this problem. Here a deterministic-stochastic flood generator was developed and applied to produce a large quantity of flood events which can be used as scenarios of possible hydrological loads. However, these simulations imply many uncertainties. The results will be biased by the basic assumptions of the modeling tools. In flood control planning probabilities are applied to characterize uncertainties. The probabilities of the simulated flood scenarios differ from probabilities which would be derived from long time series. With regard to these known unknowns the bias of the simulations was considered by imprecise probabilities. Probabilities, derived from measured flood data were combined with probabilities which were estimated from long simulated series. To consider imprecise probabilities, fuzzy sets were used to distinguish the results between more or less possible design floods. The need for such a differentiated view on the performance of flood protection systems is demonstrated by a case study.


1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 252-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadahiko Nakao ◽  
Koji Tanimoto

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilaria Prosdocimi ◽  
Thomas Kjeldsen

<p>The potential for changes in hydrometeorological extremes is routinely investigated by fitting change-permitting extreme value models to long-term observations, allowing one or more distribution parameters to change as a function of time or some physically-motivated covariate. In most practical extreme value analyses, the main quantity of interest though is the upper quantiles of the distribution, rather than the parameters' values. This study focuses on the changes in quantile estimates under different change-permitting models. First, metrics which measure the impact of changes in parameters on changes in quantiles are introduced. The mathematical structure of these change metrics is investigated for several models based on the Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. It is shown that for the most commonly used models, the predicted changes in the quantiles are a non-intuitive function of the distribution parameters, leading to results which are difficult to interpret. Next, it is posited that commonly used change-permitting GEV models do not preserve a constant coefficient of variation, a property that is typically assumed to hold and that is related to the scaling properties of extremes. To address these shortcomings a new (parsimonious) model is proposed: the model assumes a constant coefficient of variation, allowing the location and scale parameters to change simultaneously. The proposed model results in more interpretable changes in the quantile function. The consequences of the different modelling choices on quantile estimates are exemplified using a dataset of extreme peak river flow measurements.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lamya A Baharith

Truncated type I generalized logistic distribution has been used in a variety of applications. In this article, a new bivariate truncated type I generalized logistic (BTTGL) distributional models driven from three different copula functions are introduced. A study of some properties is illustrated. Parametric and semiparametric methods are used to estimate the parameters of the BTTGL models. Maximum likelihood and inference function for margin estimates of the BTTGL parameters are compared with semiparametric estimates using real data set. Further, a comparison between BTTGL, bivariate generalized exponential and bivariate exponentiated Weibull models is conducted using Akaike information criterion and the maximized log-likelihood. Extensive Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out for different values of the parameters and different sample sizes to compare the performance of parametric and semiparametric estimators based on relative mean square error.


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