Delineation of homogenous regions using hydrological variables predicted by projection pursuit regression
This study investigates the utilization of hydrological information in regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) to enforce desired properties for a group of gauged stations. Neighbourhoods are particular types of regions that are centred on target locations. A challenge for using neighbourhoods in R...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2016-11-01
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| Series: | Hydrology and Earth System Sciences |
| Online Access: | http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/4717/2016/hess-20-4717-2016.pdf |
| Summary: | This study investigates the utilization of hydrological information in
regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) to enforce desired properties for a
group of gauged stations. Neighbourhoods are particular types of regions that
are centred on target locations. A challenge for using neighbourhoods in RFFA
is that hydrological information is not available at target locations and
cannot be completely replaced by the available physiographical information.
Instead of using the available physiographic characteristics to define the
centre of a target location, this study proposes to introduce estimates of
reference hydrological variables to ensure a better homogeneity. These
reference variables represent nonlinear relations with the site
characteristics obtained by projection pursuit regression, a nonparametric
regression method. The resulting neighbourhoods are investigated in
combination with commonly used regional models: the index-flood model and
regression-based models. The complete approach is illustrated in a real-world
case study with gauged sites from the southern part of the province of
Québec, Canada, and is compared with the traditional approaches such as
region of influence and canonical correlation analysis. The evaluation
focuses on the neighbourhood properties as well as prediction performances,
with special attention devoted to problematic stations. Results show clear
improvements in neighbourhood definitions and quantile estimates. |
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| ISSN: | 1027-5606 1607-7938 |