Use of historical data in flood frequency analysis: a case study for four catchments in Norway

Autor: Kolbjørn Engeland, Donna Wilson, Péter Borsányi, Lars Roald, Erik Holmqvist
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Hydrology Research, Vol 49, Iss 2, Pp 466-486 (2018)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1998-9563
2224-7955
DOI: 10.2166/nh.2017.069
Popis: There is a need to estimate design floods for areal planning and the design of important infrastructure. A major challenge is the mismatch between the length of the flood records and needed return periods. A majority of flood time series are shorter than 50 years, and the required return periods might be 200, 500, or 1,000 years. Consequently, the estimation uncertainty is large. In this paper, we investigated how the use of historical information might improve design flood estimation. We used annual maximum data from four selected Norwegian catchments, and historical flood information to provide an indication of water levels for the largest floods in the last two to three hundred years. We assessed the added value of using historical information and demonstrated that both reliability and stability improves, especially for short record lengths and long return periods. In this study, we used information on water levels, which showed the stability of river profiles to be a major challenge.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals