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A sample reconstruction method based on a modified reservoir index for flood frequency analysis of non-stationary hydrological series

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Abstract

Flood extremes, affected by climate change and intense human activities, exhibit non-stationary characteristics. As a result, the stationarity assumption of traditional flood frequency analysis (FFA) cannot be satisfied. Generally, the impacts of human activities, especially water conservancy projects (i.e., reservoirs), on extreme flood series are much greater than those of climate change; therefore, new FFA methods must be developed to address the non-stationary flood extremes associated with large numbers of reservoirs. In this study, a new sample reconstruction method is proposed to convert the reservoir-influenced annual maximum flow (AMF) series from non-stationary to stationary, thus warranting the feasibility of the traditional FFA approach for non-stationary cases. To be more specifically, a modified reservoir index (MRI(t)) is proposed and the original non-stationary AMF series are converted to stationary series by multiplying by a scalar factor 1/(1 − MRI(t)), and thus traditional FFA can be adopted. Besides, Bayesian theory was applied to analyze the effect of uncertainty on the designed reconstructed AMF. As an example, the proposed method was applied to observations from Huangzhuang station located on the Hanjiang River. The original AMF observations from Huangzhuang displayed nonstationarity for the continuous construction of reservoirs in the basin. After applying the new method of sample reconstruction, the original AMF observations became stationary, and the designed AMFs were estimated using the reconstructed series and compared with those estimated based on the original observation series. In addition, Bayesian theory is adopted to quantify the uncertainty of designed reconstructed AMF and provide the expectation of the sampling distribution.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0402706, 2016YFC0402707 and 2016YFC0402709) and the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51190095).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Zhongmin Liang, Jing Yang, Jun Wang, Binquan Li & Jianfei Zhao

  2. National Cooperative Innovation Center for Water Safety and Hydro-Science, Nanjing, 210024, China

    Zhongmin Liang

  3. Research Institute of Management Science, Business School, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

    Yiming Hu

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  1. Zhongmin Liang
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  2. Jing Yang
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  3. Yiming Hu
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  4. Jun Wang
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  5. Binquan Li
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  6. Jianfei Zhao
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Correspondence to Zhongmin Liang.

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Liang, Z., Yang, J., Hu, Y. et al. A sample reconstruction method based on a modified reservoir index for flood frequency analysis of non-stationary hydrological series. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 32, 1561–1571 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-017-1465-1

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