Statistical modelling of extreme rainfall in Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

Flash floods are known as one of the common natural disasters that cost over billions of Ringgit Malaysia throughout history. Academically, an extreme rainfall model is effective in modelling to predict and prevent the occurrence of flash floods. This paper compares four probability distributions, namely, exponential distribution, generalized extreme value distribution, gamma distribution, and Weibull distribution, with the rainfall data of 10 stations in peninsular Malaysia. The period of the data is from 1975 to 2008. The comparison is based on the descriptive and predictive analytics of the models. The determination of the most effective model is through Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Anderson-Darling, and chi-square test. The result shows that generalized extreme value is the most preferred extreme rainfall model for the rainfall cases in Peninsular Malaysia.