Regional Flood Frequency Analysis of the Sava River in South-Eastern Europe

Igor Leščešen, Mojca Šraj, Biljana Basarin, Dragoslav Pavić, Minučer Mesaroš and Manfred Mudelsee
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Igor Leščešen: Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 3, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Mojca Šraj: Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Jamova Cesta 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Biljana Basarin: Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 3, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Dragoslav Pavić: Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 3, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Minučer Mesaroš: Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 3, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Manfred Mudelsee: Climate Risk Analysis, Kreuzstrasse 27, 37581 Bad Gandersheim, Germany

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 15, 1-19

Abstract: Regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) is a powerful method for interrogating hydrological series since it combines observational time series from several sites within a region to estimate risk-relevant statistical parameters with higher accuracy than from single-site series. Since RFFA extreme value estimates depend on the shape of the selected distribution of the data-generating stochastic process, there is need for a suitable goodness-of-distributional-fit measure in order to optimally utilize given data. Here we present a novel, least-squares-based measure to select the optimal fit from a set of five distributions, namely Generalized Extreme Value (GEV), Generalized Logistic, Gumbel, Log-Normal Type III and Log-Pearson Type III. The fit metric is applied to annual maximum discharge series from six hydrological stations along the Sava River in South-eastern Europe, spanning the years 1961 to 2020. Results reveal that (1) the Sava River basin can be assessed as hydrologically homogeneous and (2) the GEV distribution provides typically the best fit. We offer hydrological-meteorological insights into the differences among the six stations. For the period studied, almost all stations exhibit statistically insignificant trends, which renders the conclusions about flood risk as relevant for hydrological sciences and the design of regional flood protection infrastructure.

Keywords: discharge time series; flood risk analysis; Generalized Extreme Value distribution; L -moments estimation; regional flood frequency analysis; Sava River (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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