Potential of plotting positions for intensity-duration-frequency curves with short rainfall records

Abstract

Intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves represent the relationship between storm intensity, storm duration and return period. The IDF curves available are mostly done by fitting series of annual maximum rainfall intensity to parametric distributions. However, the length of annual rainfall records, especially for small scaled data, are not always enough. Rainfall records of less than 50 years are usually deemed insufficient to unequivocally identify the probability distribution of the annual rainfall. Thus, this study introduces an alternative approach that replaces the need for parametric fitting by using empirical distribution based on plotting positions to represent annual maximum rainfall series. Subsequently, these plotting positions are used to build IDF curves. The IDF curves found are then compared to the IDF curves yielded from the parametric GEV distribution which is a common basis for IDF curves. This study indicates that IDF curves obtained using plotting positions are similar to IDF curves found using GEV distribution for storm events. Hence, researchers could model and subsequently build IDF curves for annual rainfall records of less than 50 years by using plotting positions and avoid any probability distribution fitting of insufficient data.