Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.1029/2024WR039739
Lizenz creative commons licence
Titel (primär) Simulating realistic design storms: a joint return period approach
Autor Cache, T.; Bevacqua, E. ORCID logo ; Zscheischler, J. ORCID logo ; Müller-Thomy, H.; Peleg, N.
Quelle Water Resources Research
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
Department CER
Band/Volume 61
Heft 7
Seite von e2024WR039739
Sprache englisch
Topic T5 Future Landscapes
Daten-/Softwarelinks https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15119797
Supplements https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1029%2F2024WR039739&file=2024WR039739-sup-0001-Supporting+Information+SI-S01.pdf
Keywords design storm; heavy rainfall; compound return periods; intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curve; urban flood; intra-event multivariate dependencies
Abstract Design storms are key components for planning drainage networks and flood risk management. Due to atmospheric processes, precipitation accumulations across multiple temporal intervals are often correlated and can combine to shape flood intensities. However, current design storm guidance overlook the observed correlations between return periods of different duration intervals within storms and may thereby lead to under- or over-estimation of the flood risk. We present a new approach for generating plausible design storms that accounts for joint return periods. Focusing on short-duration extreme precipitation events, potentially leading to urban pluvial flooding, we analyze the dependencies between critical precipitation intensities over the 10-min, 30-min, 1-hr, 3-hr, and 6-hr intervals, for data from Zurich (Switzerland). We then propose a method based on a canonical vine copula model for sampling precipitation intensities that reflect the observations' dependencies. Using this model, we then generate realistic design storms with a constrained micro-canonical cascade model. Our results shows that the common block methods (e.g., the Chicago and Euler design storms) tend to overestimate total precipitation volumes on average, by up to 56%. Furthermore, we highlight the variability in possible duration-frequency profiles, leading to both higher and lower total precipitation volumes compared to standard approaches. This underscores the need to switch from traditional block methods to a more realistic sampling of design storms, incorporating multiple design storm scenarios for robust risk assessment. The model is applicable to any time series of precipitation, regardless of its location or climate. The code is freely available.
dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=31030
Cache, T., Bevacqua, E., Zscheischler, J., Müller-Thomy, H., Peleg, N. (2025):
Simulating realistic design storms: a joint return period approach
Water Resour. Res. 61 (7), e2024WR039739 10.1029/2024WR039739