ournal: IRANIAN JOURNAL OF SOIL AND WATER RESEARCH SPRING 2013 , Volume 44 , Number 1;

Page(s) 21 To 32.

Paper: FLOOD DISCHARGE FREQUENCY ANALYSIS AS BASED ON RAINFALL-RUNOFF SIMULATION

METHOD (HEC-HMS MODEL) AND STATISTICAL DISTRIBUTIONS

Author(s): SAGHAFIAN BAHRAM, GHASEMI ALIREZA*, GOLIAN SAEED

* TEHRAN REGIONAL WATER DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, TEHRAN, IRAN

Flood frequency analysis method is employed to predict the design floods needed for the
implementation of hydraulic structures along a river. In this method, the magnitudes of
floods are made related to their frequencies using statistical distribution functions. The
accuracy of flood estimation depends on some factors including fitting the best probability
distribution function along with an estimation of its parameters, period of available
data, commonplace errors in measurement and an existence of outlier data. Calibrated
hydrological models can also be applied to simulate large flood events. Uncertainties arising
from the hydrological modeling, e.g. the modeling assumptions and the uncertainties in
inputs and in parameters which are used in the models, are the factors which affect the
simulated peak discharges. In the course of this paper, flood frequency analysis was
performed using a hydrological modeling approach with the results compared with
traditional flood frequency analysis as based on the observed data. The method was applied
to Tangrah Watershed. The average rainfall values were initially calculated for different
durations and for different return periods. For each rainfall value, a Monte Carlo scheme was
employed to consider the uncertainties in rainfall spatial distribution and Antecedent soil
Moisture Condition (AMC). Using different combinations of rainfall depths along with their
spatial distributions over watershed and also AMC conditions as the inputs of hydrologic
model (HEC-HMS), peak discharges of different return periods were found out. Besides the
modeling approach, the best probability distribution was fitted as based on Anderson-
Darling goodness-of-fit test with flood peak discharges being calculated while using the
observed data. It was deduced that the outlier rainfall exerts a significant effect on rainfall
runoff simulation results and this effect increases with increase in return period. For
instance, the simulated peak discharge of 50% probability reduces from 1297 to 338
cm2 following an omission of the outlier for the case of 200 year return period of 6hr
duration rainfalls. The spatial rainfall distribution and antecedent soil moisture conditions
largely influence the peak discharge of different return periods. Also, an observed peak
discharge is seen as greater than the results obtained from rainfall simulation. As an
example, for a return period of 200 years, hydrologic modeling results are found out as lower
than the frequency analysis results by about 30.4%. An incorrect selection of statistical
distribution plays a major role in increasing the difference between the results obtained from
these two methods.