Anna E. Sikorska

Estimating the Uncertainty of Hydrological Predictions through Data-Driven Resampling Techniques

AbstractEstimating the uncertainty of hydrological models remains a relevant challenge in applied hydrology, mostly because it is not easy to parameterize the complex structure of hydrological model errors. A nonparametric technique is proposed as an alternative to parametric error models to estimate the uncertainty of hydrological predictions. Within this approach, the above uncertainty is assumed to depend on input data uncertainty, parameter uncertainty and model error, where the latter aggregates all sources of uncertainty that are not considered explicitly. Errors of hydrological models are simulated by resampling from their past realizations using a nearest neighbor approach, therefore avoiding a formal description of their statistical properties. The approach is tested using synthetic data which refer to the case study located in Italy. The results are compared with those obtained using a formal statistical technique (meta-Gaussian approach) from the same case study. Our findings prove that the nea...

Curve Number Estimation for a Small Urban Catchment from Recorded Rainfall-Runoff Events

Abstract Runoff estimation is a key component in various hydrological considerations. Estimation of storm runoff is especially important for the effective design of hydraulic and road structures, for the flood flow management, as well as for the analysis of land use changes, i.e. urbanization or low impact development of urban areas. The curve number (CN) method, developed by Soil Conservation Service (SCS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for predicting the flood runoff depth from ungauged catchments, has been in continuous use for ca. 60 years. This method has not been extensively tested in Poland, especially in small urban catchments, because of lack of data. In this study, 39 rainfall-runoff events, collected during four years (2009–2012) in a small (A=28.7 km2), urban catchment of Służew Creek in southwest part of Warsaw were used, with the aim of determining the CNs and to check its applicability to ungauged urban areas. The parameters CN, estimated empirically, vary from 65.1 to 95.0, decreasing with rainfall size and, when sorted rainfall and runoff separately, reaching the value from 67 to 74 for large rainfall events.

Flood-type classification in mountainous catchments using crisp and fuzzy decision trees

Floods are governed by largely varying processes and thus exhibit various behaviors. Classification of flood events into flood types and the determination of their respective frequency is therefore important for a better understanding and prediction of floods. This study presents a flood classification for identifying flood patterns at a catchment scale by means of a fuzzy decision tree. Hence, events are represented as a spectrum of six main possible flood types that are attributed with their degree of acceptance. Considered types are flash, short rainfall, long rainfall, snow-melt, rainfall on snow and, in high alpine catchments, glacier-melt floods. The fuzzy decision tree also makes it possible to acknowledge the uncertainty present in the identification of flood processes and thus allows for more reliable flood class estimates than using a crisp decision tree, which identifies one flood type per event. Based on the data set in nine Swiss mountainous catchments, it was demonstrated that this approach is less sensitive to uncertainties in the classification attributes than the classical crisp approach. These results show that the fuzzy approach bears additional potential for analyses of flood patterns at a catchment scale and thereby it provides more realistic representation of flood processes.

Flood type specific construction of synthetic design hydrographs

Accurate estimates of flood peaks, corresponding volumes, and hydrographs are required to design safe and cost-effective hydraulic structures. In this paper, we propose a statistical approach for the estimation of the design variables peak and volume by constructing synthetic design hydrographs for different flood types such as flash-floods, short-rain floods, long-rain floods, and rain-on-snow floods. Our approach relies on the fitting of probability density functions to observed flood hydrographs of a certain flood type and accounts for the dependence between peak discharge and flood volume. It makes use of the statistical information contained in the data and retains the process information of the flood type. The method was tested based on data from 39 mesoscale catchments in Switzerland and provides catchment specific and flood type specific synthetic design hydrographs for all of these catchments. We demonstrate that flood type specific synthetic design hydrographs are meaningful in flood-risk management when combined with knowledge on the seasonality and the frequency of different flood types.

Parameters determination of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model for a small catchment in Carpathians

Abstract Parameters determination of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model for a small catchment in Carpathians. One of the most important tasks in hydrology is to simulate and forecast hydrologic processes and variables. To achieve this, various linear and nonlinear hydrologic models were developed. One of the most commonly applied rainfall-runoff models is the Nash’s model of the Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (IUH) (Nash, 1957) used jointly with the CN-NRCS method. Within this paper, the Nash’s model was applied to a small forested basin (Vištucký Creek, Slovakia) to reconstruct rainfall-runoff events based on the recorded precipitation. The Vištucký Creek catchment, located in the Little Carpathians, is a part of the flood protection management of regional sites in the Little Carpathians. Therefore, the object of this paper is, first, to determine the parameters of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model for the Vištucký creek catchment, second, to analyse how the selected characteristics of the model depend on the rainfall characteristics, and third, to compare obtained results with a similar study of Sikorska and Banasik (2010). The computer programme developed at the Dept. of Water Engineering (WULS-SGGW) was used to obtain the rainfall-runoff characteristics based on the Nash´s model. The derived characteristics were parameters of the Nash’s model (N, k, lag time) and rainfall-runoff characteristics (sum of total and effective precipitation, rainfall duration, runoff coefficient, time to IUH peak, value of IUH peak, goodness of fit). A relatively small effective precipitation from the rainfall events was derived. For the purpose of the analysis, a correlation between the lag time (and k parameter) and the sum of the total and effective precipitation was used. The use of the conceptual rainfall-runoff model (Nash´s model) for the small catchment in Carpathians was proved to give satisfactory results. The rainfall characteristics derived in this study are comparable to the results obtained by Spál et. al (2011), who used the same catchment in their analysis. Interestingly, our analysis indicated that there is a correlation between the rainfall duration and the lag time, what is opposite to the compared results of Sikorska and Banasik (2010). Streszczenie Określenie parametrów modelu konceptualnego opad-odpływ dla małej zlewni w Karpatach. Jednym z ważniejszych zagadnień w hydrologii jest matematyczne symulowanie i prognozowanie procesów hydrologicznych, które musi być poprzedzone wyznaczeniem parametrów stosowanych modeli. Do matematycznego opisu procesów opad-odpływ w małych zlewniach opracowano szereg modeli liniowych i nieliniowych o różnym stopniu złożoności. Jednym z częściej stosowanych jest model liniowy, w którym opad efektywny wyznaczany jest wg metody CN (Curve Number), stosowanej w Służbie Ochrony Zasobów Naturalnych (Natural Rsources Conservation Service) Departamentu Rolnictwa USA, a do transformacji opadu efektywnego w odpływ bezpośredni wykorzystywany jest chwilowy hydrogram jednostkowy (IUH) wg Nasha. Model ten zastosowano do odtworzenia zdarzeń opad-odpływ w małej leśnej zlewni górskiej Vistucky Potok w Małych Karpatach w zachodniej Słowacji. Celem przeprowadzonych badań było, po pierwsze - wyznaczenie parametrów zastosowanego modelu, na podstawie dziewięciu zarejestrowanych zdarzeń opad-odpływ w okresie 2005-2010, po drugie - zanalizowanie zależności parametrów modelu od charakterystyk deszczu, i po trzecie - porównanie wartości charakterystyk zdarzeń opad-odpływ i parametrów modelu z wynikami podobnego opracowania podobnego opracowania wykonanego dla zurbanizowanej zlewni Potoku Służewieckiego w Warszawie (Sikorska i Banasik 2010). Do wyznaczenia charakterystyk na podstawie zarejestrowanych zdarzeń opad-odpływ, parametrów modelu oraz do wyznaczenia hydrogramu “regenerowanego” i określenia parametrów jego zgodności z hydrogramem obserwowanym, wykorzystano program komputerowy SN opracowany w Katedrze Inżynierii Wodnej SGGW. Uzyskano zbieżność wyników w odniesieniu do parametru CN (wartości średniej z analizowanych zdarzeń z wartością tablicową - ustaloną we wcześniejszych badaniach na podstawie rodzaju gleb i użytkowania terenu badanej zlewni) oraz stosunkowo małą zmienność czasu opóźnienia - Lag (iloczyny parametrów modelu Nasha: N i k). Stosunkowa mała wartość parametru CN i współczynnika odpływu wynika z leśnego użytkowania zlewni. Uzyskano bardzo słabe zależności pomiędzy parametrami modelu i charakterystykami opadu. Porównanie wyników analizy zdarzeń opadowych w obydwu zlewniach potwierdza znacznie zróżnicowanie parametru CN oraz wskazuje na małe różnice w czasie opóźnienia, determinowanego użytkowaniem, topografią i wielkością powierzchni zlewni.

Uncertainty assessment of synthetic design hydrographs for gauged and ungauged catchments

Design hydrographs described by peak discharge, hydrograph volume, and hydrograph shapeare essential for engineering tasks involving storage. Such design hydrographs are inherently uncertain asare classical flood estimates focusing on peak discharge only. Various sources of uncertainty contribute tothe total uncertainty of synthetic design hydrographs for gauged and ungauged catchments. These com-prise model uncertainties, sampling uncertainty, and uncertainty due to the choice of a regionalizationmethod. A quantification of the uncertainties associated with flood estimates is essential for reliable deci-sion making and allows for the identification of important uncertainty sources. We therefore propose anuncertainty assessment framework for the quantification of the uncertainty associated with synthetic designhydrographs. The framework is based on bootstrap simulations and consists of three levels of complexity.On the first level, we assess the uncertainty due to individual uncertainty sources. On the second level, wequantify the total uncertainty of design hydrographs for gauged catchments and the total uncertainty ofregionalizing them to ungauged catchments but independently from the construction uncertainty. On thethird level, we assess the coupled uncertainty of synthetic design hydrographs in ungauged catchments,jointly considering construction and regionalization uncertainty. We find that the most important sources ofuncertainty in design hydrograph construction are the record length and the choice of the flood samplingstrategy. The total uncertainty of design hydrographs in ungauged catchments depends on the catchmentproperties and is not negligible in our case.

Synthetic design hydrographs for ungauged catchments: a comparison of regionalization methods

Design flood estimates for a given return period are required in both gauged and ungauged catchments for hydraulic design and risk assessments. Contrary to classical design estimates, synthetic design hydrographs provide not only information on the peak magnitude of events but also on the corresponding hydrograph volumes together with the hydrograph shapes. In this study, we tested different regionalization approaches to transfer parameters of synthetic design hydrographs from gauged to ungauged catchments. These approaches include classical regionalization methods such as linear regression techniques, spatial methods, and methods based on the formation of homogeneous regions. In addition to these classical approaches, we tested nonlinear regression models not commonly used in hydrological regionalization studies, such as random forest, bagging, and boosting. We found that parameters related to the magnitude of the design event can be regionalized well using both linear and nonlinear regression techniques using catchment area, length of the main channel, maximum precipitation intensity, and relief energy as explanatory variables. The hydrograph shape, however, was found to be more difficult to regionalize due to its high variability within a catchment. Such variability might be better represented by looking at flood-type specific synthetic design hydrographs.

Bivariate analysis of floods in climate impact assessments

Climate impact studies regarding floods usually focus on peak discharges and a bivariate assessment of peak discharges and hydrograph volumes is not commonly included. A joint consideration of peak discharges and hydrograph volumes, however, is crucial when assessing flood risks for current and future climate conditions. Here, we present a methodology to develop synthetic design hydrographs for future climate conditions that jointly consider peak discharges and hydrograph volumes. First, change factors are derived based on a regional climate model and are applied to observed precipitation and temperature time series. Second, the modified time series are fed into a calibrated hydrological model to simulate runoff time series for future conditions. Third, these time series are used to construct synthetic design hydrographs. The bivariate flood frequency analysis used in the construction of synthetic design hydrographs takes into account the dependence between peak discharges and hydrograph volumes, and represents the shape of the hydrograph. The latter is modeled using a probability density function while the dependence between the design variables peak discharge and hydrograph volume is modeled using a copula. We applied this approach to a set of eight mountainous catchments in Switzerland to construct catchment-specific and season-specific design hydrographs for a control and three scenario climates. Our work demonstrates that projected climate changes have an impact not only on peak discharges but also on hydrograph volumes and on hydrograph shapes both at an annual and at a seasonal scale. These changes are not necessarily proportional which implies that climate impact assessments on future floods should consider more flood characteristics than just flood peaks.

Modeling Suspended Sediment Concentration in the Stormwater Outflow from a Small Detention Pond

AbstractDetention ponds constructed in urban areas should perform two major functions: reduce flood flows and improve quality of runoff by trapping sediments and related pollutants. Providing tools...

A Comparison of Methods for Streamflow Uncertainty Estimation

Streamflow time series are commonly derived from stage-discharge rating curves, but theuncertainty of the rating curve and resulting streamflow series are poorly understood. While differentmethods to quantify uncertainty in the stage-discharge relationship exist, there is limited understanding ofhow uncertainty estimates differ between methods due to different assumptions and methodologicalchoices. We compared uncertainty estimates and stage-discharge rating curves from seven methods at threeriver locations of varying hydraulic complexity. Comparison of the estimated uncertainties revealed a widerange of estimates, particularly for high and low flows. At the simplest site on the Isere River (France), fullwidth 95% uncertainties for the different methods ranged from 3 to 17% for median flows. In contrast,uncertainties were much higher and ranged from 41 to 200% for high flows in an extrapolated section of therating curve at the Mahurangi River (New Zealand) and 28 to 101% for low flows at the Taf River (UnitedKingdom), where the hydraulic control is unstable at low flows. Differences between methods result fromdifferences in the sources of uncertainty considered, differences in the handling of the time-varying nature ofrating curves, differences in the extent of hydraulic knowledge assumed, and differences in assumptionswhen extrapolating rating curves above or below the observed gaugings. Ultimately, the selection of anuncertainty method requires a match between user requirements and the assumptions made by theuncertainty method. Given the signi ficant differences in uncertainty estimates between methods, we suggestthat a clear statement of uncertainty assumptions be presented alongside streamflow uncertainty estimates.