Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ac3d59
Lizenz creative commons licence
Titel (primär) PHEV! The PHysically-based Extreme Value distribution of river flows
Autor Basso, S.; Botter, G.; Merz, R.; Miniussi, A.
Quelle Environmental Research Letters
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
Department CATHYD
Band/Volume 16
Heft 12
Seite von art. 124065
Sprache englisch
Topic T5 Future Landscapes
Keywords flood hazard; runff dynamics; extreme events; flood frequency; large scale benchmarking
Abstract Magnitude and frequency are prominent features of river floods informing design of engineering structures, insurance premiums and adaptation strategies. Recent advances yielding a formal characterization of these variables from a joint description of soil moisture and daily runoff dynamics in river basins are here systematized to highlight their chief outcome: the PHysically-based Extreme Value (PHEV) distribution of river flows. This is a physically-based alternative to empirical estimates and purely statistical methods hitherto used to characterize extremes of hydro-meteorological variables. Capabilities of PHEV for predicting flood magnitude and frequency are benchmarked against a standard distribution and the latest statistical approach for extreme estimation, by using both an extensive observational dataset and long synthetic series of streamflow generated for river basins from contrasting hydro-climatic regions. The analyses outline the domain of applicability of PHEV and reveal its fairly unbiased capabilities to estimate flood magnitudes with return periods much longer than the sample size used for calibration in a wide range of case studies. The results also emphasize reduced prediction uncertainty of PHEV for rare floods, notably if the flood magnitude-frequency curve displays an inflection point. These features, arising from the mechanistic understanding embedded in the novel distribution of the largest river flows, are key for a reliable assessment of the actual flooding hazard associated to poorly sampled rare events, especially when lacking long observational records.
dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=25413
Basso, S., Botter, G., Merz, R., Miniussi, A. (2021):
PHEV! The PHysically-based Extreme Value distribution of river flows
Environ. Res. Lett. 16 (12), art. 124065 10.1088/1748-9326/ac3d59