Regional flood frequency analysis of the Sava river in South-Eastern Europe

Leščešen, Igor (author), Šraj, Mojca (author), Basarin, Biljana (author), Pavić, Dragoslav (author), Mesaroš, Minučer (author), Mudelsee, Manfred (author)

Regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) is a powerful method for interrogating hydrological series since it combines observational time series from several sites within a region to estimate risk-relevant statistical parameters with higher accuracy than from single-site series. Since RFFA extreme value estimates depend on the shape of the selected distribution of the data-generating stochastic process, there is need for a suitable goodness-of-distributional-fit measure in order to optimally utilize given data. Here we present a novel, least-squares-based measure to select the optimal fit from a set of five distributions, namely Generalized Extreme Value (GEV), Generalized Logistic, Gumbel, Log-Normal Type III and Log-Pearson Type III. The fit metric is applied to annual maximum discharge series from six hydrological stations along the Sava River in South-eastern Europe, spanning the years 1961 to 2020. Results reveal that (1) the Sava River basin can be assessed as hydrologically homogeneous and (2) the GEV distribution provides typically the best fit. We offer hydrological-meteorological insights into the differences among the six stations. For the period studied, almost all stations exhibit statistically insignificant trends, which renders the conclusions about flood risk as relevant for hydrological sciences and the design of regional flood protection infrastructure.

• Language: English
• Keywords: discharge time series, flood risk analysis, generalized extreme value distribution
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FGG - Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 19 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 14, iss. 15, art. 9282
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-140940
• UDC: 556
• ISSN on article: 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su14159282
• COBISS.SI-ID: 120436227
• Publication date in RUL: 21.09.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Sustainability
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2071-1050
• COBISS.SI-ID: 5324897

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 20.09.2022

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Title: Regionalna verjetnostna analiza poplav reke Save v jugovzhodni Evropi
• Keywords: časovne serije pretokov, verjetnostna analiza poplav, generalizirana porazdelitev ekstremnih vrednosti

Projects

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Funding programme: H2020
• Project number: 952384
• Name: Twinning for the advancement of data-driven multidisciplinary research into hydro-climatic extremes to support risk assessment and decision making
• Acronym: EXtremeClimTwin