Multivariate Hydrologic Risk Analysis for River Thames

Abstract

This study analyzed the multivariate flood risk for the river Thames at Kingston based on historical flood data from the National River Flow Archive (NRFA) website. The bivariate risk analysis framework was prepared from the joint return periods of the peak flow (m3/s) and 3-day annual maximum flow (m3/s) flood pair. A total of 137 samples of flood pairs from 1883 to 2019 were adopted for risk analysis. The multivariate return periods were characterized depending on the quantification of the bivariate flood frequency analysis of the pair through copulas methods. The unknown parameter of each copula was estimated using the method-of-moment (MOM) estimator based on Kendall’s tau inversion, in which the Clayton copula performed best to model the dependence of the two flood variables. Then, the bivariate hydrologic risk was characterized based on the joint return period in AND, established from the Clayton copula method. The results reveal that the flood pair would keep a constant hydrologic risk value for some time then moderately decrease as the 3-day AMAX flow increases from 700 m3/s. This hydrologic risk indicator was analyzed under four service time scenarios and three peak flows whose return periods were positioned at 50, 100, and 150 years. The outcomes from the bivariate risk analysis of the flood pairs can be used as decision support during the design of flood defenses and hydraulic facilities.

Spatial Dependence Analysis of Weekly Moving Cumulative Rainfall for Flood Risk Assessment

“…The paper suggests that the joint (primary) return periods can be further characterized by "AND" cases. This implies that the joint return period is calculated by considering the probability of both events occurring simultaneously [29,30]. For instance, the joint return period for a flood event could be calculated by considering the probability of both the rainfall event and the river discharge event exceeding certain thresholds within a given time frame as Equation ( 5) :…”

“…The intensity of flood risk is usually determined by the period of future re-occurrence of heavy inundation, commonly known as the return period. Under consideration of the service time (i.e., n) of a hydrological infrastructure, the risk of failure associated with the return period of a flooding event can be expressed as Equation ( 6) [30] :…”