Depth-AreaDurationFrequency Analysis

PRECIPITATION

Depth-Area Relation

Some attempted
fitting in Indian
condition with some
success:

= exp( )

Choose increasingly larger isohyet

envelope and compute average rainfall

No Standard
Recommendation.
Nothing theoretical
either. Its purely a
curve fitting
equation.

Depth-Area Duration
A fitting equation used in UK:
= (1 )
D is the duration in hours.

Choose different time intervals (durations) in a mass curve and select

the maximum for each chosen duration.

Freq uency

Occurrence of rainfall at a location is a random variable, X

Let us consider an extreme storm of magnitude x, this can be annual,

maximum for a fixed duration, maximum intensity, etc.

Probability of such a storm of intensity x or greater occurring in a given

year is P(X x) = p, Return period of such a storm T = 1/p

Probability of such a storm not occurring in a given year, q = 1-p

Probability of such a storm occurring k times in n successive years can

then be obtained from Binomial Distribution:

, =

What are probabilities of such a storm:

not occurring for n successive years?

occurring at least once in n successive years?

How to compute p? Empirical

Non-parametric or empirical formulae:

=
+

where, m = location (rank) of the storm in a ranked list of storms in sorted

in decreasing order of magnitude and n = size of the list (data set).
Name

California

Weibull

Hazen

0.5

Chegodayev

0.3

0.4

Blom

0.44

0.12

Gringerton

0.375

0.25

What to do then?

Calculate: p, T

Plot Rainfall (mm) or Intensity

(mm/h) vs. ln T

Fit Straight Line

One can find:

Storm of certain intensity for a

given return period

Return period for a given storm

intensity

Small extrapolations possible

(see example plot in the text

book)

How to compute p? (Theoretical)

Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution:

1
= 1

k = 0: Type I or Gumbel distribution

k < 0: Type II or Frechet distribution
k > 0: Type III (-x has Weibull distribution)
Storm rainfall distribution: Extreme Value Type I

EV Type I

pdf:
=

where, < <

= 0.5772 =

cdf:
=

where, =

or = +

What next?

Computation of T for a given storm of strength x:

1
= = =1 < =1

Computation of storm strength for a given return

period:
1

or = 1

=
1

Generation of DDF-IDF

Take the mass curve

Select a t or D, find max. depth or intensity from

the hyetograph for the chosen duration

Repeat for different values of D

Repeat the above procedure for mass curves of

different return period.

Note: one can choose a number of storms of

certain return period or larger from each year and
compile over a number of years.

DDF-IDF

DDF-IDF