Uncertainty Estimation Using the Glue and Bayesian Approaches in Flood Estimation: A case Study—Ba River, Vietnam

Abstract

In the last few decades tremendous progress has been made in the use of catchment models for the analysis and understanding of hydrologic systems. A common application involves the use of these models to predict flows at catchment outputs. However, the outputs predicted by these models are often deterministic because they focused only on the most probable forecast without an explicit estimate of the associated uncertainty. This paper uses Bayesian and Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) approaches to estimate uncertainty in catchment modelling parameter values and uncertainty in design flow estimates. Testing of join probability of both these estimates has been conducted for a monsoon catchment in Vietnam. The paper focuses on computational efficiency and the differences in results, regardless of the philosophies and mathematical rigor of both methods. It was found that the application of GLUE and Bayesian techniques resulted in parameter values that were statistically different. The design flood quantiles estimated by the GLUE method were less scattered than those resulting from the Bayesian approach when using a closer threshold value (1 standard deviation departed from the mean). More studies are required to evaluate the impact of threshold in GLUE on design flood estimation.

Keywords

• design flood quantiles
• hydrology
• flood frequency analysis
• continuous simulation
• Bayesian approach
• GLUE approach
• catchment modelling