Publication
Nonstationarity: Flood Magnification and Recurrence Reduction Factors in the United States
With Richard M. Vogel and Chad Yaindl. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 47(3), 464 to 474, June 2011.
- Author
- Meghan Walter
- Year
- 2011
- Topics
- Source
- See the link at the end
This peer-reviewed article generalizes the conference work to the whole United States. It introduces two tools for engineers working with nonstationary flood records: the flood magnification factor, which expresses how much a flood of a given return period grows over a decade of continued trend, and the recurrence reduction factor, which expresses the shortening of the return period for a flood of fixed magnitude. Both are derived from a log-linear trend model fit to annual peak flows and are simple enough to apply with a standard flood frequency analysis.
Applied to gages across the country, the factors show that where trends exist, particularly in urbanizing basins, design floods estimated under the stationarity assumption can be substantially too small within the life of a structure. The article has become a standard reference in the nonstationary flood frequency literature.
Details
AuthorsRichard M. Vogel, Chad Yaindl, Meghan WalterJournalJAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources AssociationVolume and pages47(3), 464 to 474PublishedJune 2011, WileyDOI10.1111/j.1752-1688.2011.00541.x