An Extended Flood Characteristic Simulation Considering Natural Dependency Structures

Abstract

The design of a river-basin-specific flood hydrograph generator based on gauge records enables the generation of synthetic flood hydrographs for the dimensioning of hydraulic structures. Based on selected flow time series, flood waves can be described using four parameters based on flood characteristic simulations, as described by Leichtfuss and Lohr (1999). After successfully adapting suitable distribution functions, dependencies in the load structure are quantified in the next step using copula functions. This newly developed approach builds on the procedure proposed by Bender and Jensen (2012), which assumes hydrological independence. Using copula functions results in increased accuracy in the extended flood characteristic simulation. Moreover, considerable enhancements are achieved through the utilization of genetic algorithms, wherein the descending branch of the flood hydrograph is adjusted by employing an additional variable factor. Subsequently, any number of synthetic flood hydrographs can be generated by combining these parameters. In keeping with the principle of Monte Carlo simulation, a sufficiently high number of synthetic events results in extreme conditions with a low probability of occurrence being reliably represented. Hence, this endeavor has the potential to enhance result reproducibility and prediction quality. As a result, this expanded approach can be employed to provide dependable assessments regarding inflows aimed at optimizing reservoir capacity, for instance.

Keywords

• flood hydrograph
• dimensioning of hydraulic structures
• genetic algorithms
• copula
• Monte Carlo simulation
• extreme conditions