Despite frequent use of estimated flood discharges from urban and small rural catchments, the assessment of uncertainty in instantaneous discharge due to inaccurate head measurements is generally not performed. The present work discusses the impact of inaccurate head measurement on observed instantaneous flood discharge. The sources and sizes of uncertainties in head determination are discussed. A simple uncertainty model is developed in order to quantify the uncertainty in error-corrupted instantaneous and mean discharge. It is shown that uncertainty in mean discharge is less affected by uncorrelated head measurement error, while instantaneous discharges are substantially affected. Practical modelling using data from a Norwegian urban gauging station is undertaken. It is shown that the estimated annual maximum instantaneous flood discharge from this watershed has 95% confidence limits with sizes of 17–19% of the estimated discharge for average head measurement accuracy. Furthermore, it is shown that variability in head determination causes only a minor potential for bias in estimated instantaneous flood population statistics and quantiles.
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Research Article|
June 01 2005
Uncertainty in flood discharges from urban and small rural catchments due to inaccurate head measurement
A. Petersen-Øverleir;
1Hydrological Department, Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, PO Box 5091, Majorstua, N-0301 Oslo, Norway
E-mail: [email protected]
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T. Reitan
T. Reitan
2Division of Statistics and Insurance Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1053, Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway
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Hydrology Research (2005) 36 (3): 245–257.
Article history
Received:
June 07 2004
Accepted:
September 20 2004
Citation
A. Petersen-Øverleir, T. Reitan; Uncertainty in flood discharges from urban and small rural catchments due to inaccurate head measurement. Hydrology Research 1 June 2005; 36 (3): 245–257. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/nh.2005.0018
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