Flood frequency analysis for the annual peak flows simulated by an event-based rainfall-runoff model in an urban drainage basin

Abstract

The proper assessment of design flood is a major concern for many hydrological applications in small urban watersheds. A number of approaches can be used including statistical approach and the continuous simulation and design storm methods. However, each method has its own limitations and assumptions being applied to the real world. The design storm method has been widely used for a long time because of the simplicity of the method, but three critical assumptions are made such as the equality of the return periods between the rainfall and corresponding flood quantiles and the selections of the rainfall hyetograph and antecedent soil moisture conditions. Continuous simulation cannot be applied to small urban catchments with quick responses of runoff to rainfall. In this paper, a new flood frequency analysis for the simulated annual peak flows (FASAP) is proposed. This method employs the candidate rainfall events selected by considering a time step order of five minutes and a sliding duration without any assumptions about the conventional design storm method in an urban watershed. In addition, the proposed methodology was verified by comparing the results with the conventional method in a real urban watershed.