Orlicz risks for assessing stochastic streamflow environments: a static optimization approach

Abstract

This study applies novel risk measures, called Orlicz risks, to the risk and uncertainty evaluation of the streamflow discharge as a primary driver of hydrological and hydraulic processes of interest in civil and environmental engineering. We consider the mixed moving average process governing the discharge whose statistics are explicitly represented as some product of a time-scale characterizing the flow attenuation and a jump moment governing the size and frequency of jumps. The classical Orlicz risks are extended so that not only the upper tail risk but also the lower one of the jump size and attenuation of the discharge can be evaluated within a single mathematical framework. Further, the risk and uncertainty can be individually quantified in a tractable manner by the proposed Orlicz risks. Computing the Orlicz risks reduces to solving a pair of novel static optimization problems that are solvable semi-analytically. The risk and uncertainty involved in the streamflow dynamics can be consistently evaluated by specifying few user-dependent parameters. The associated Radon–Nikodym derivatives as the worst-case model uncertainties are obtained as byproducts. Sufficient conditions for the well-posedness of the Orlicz risks are discussed and numerical algorithms for computing them are presented. We finally apply the proposed framework to a statistical analysis of the streamflow discharge time series data collected at mountainous river environments.