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Copyright Copernicus GmbH 2014

Abstract

The use of non-systematic flood data for statistical purposes depends on the reliability of the assessment of both flood magnitudes and their return period. The earliest known extreme flood year is usually the beginning of the historical record. Even if one properly assesses the magnitudes of historic floods, the problem of their return periods remains unsolved. The matter at hand is that only the largest flood (XM) is known during whole historical period and its occurrence marks the beginning of the historical period and defines its length (L). It is common practice to use the earliest known flood year as the beginning of the record. It means that the L value selected is an empirical estimate of the lower bound on the effective historical length M. The estimation of the return period of XM based on its occurrence (L), i.e. ^M = L, gives a severe upward bias. The problem arises that to estimate the time period (M) representative of the largest observed flood XM.

From the discrete uniform distribution with support 1, 2, ... , M of the probability of the L position of XM, one gets ^L = M/2. Therefore ^M = 2L has been taken as the return period of XM and as the effective historical record length as well this time. As in the systematic period (N) all its elements are smaller than XM, one can get ^M

Details

Title
Flood frequency analysis supported by the largest historical flood
Author
Strupczewski, W. G.; Kochanek, K.; Bogdanowicz, E.
First page
1543
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
ISSN
15618633
e-ISSN
16849981
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1542903397
Copyright
Copyright Copernicus GmbH 2014