Evaluation of the Adequacy of Statistical Distribution Functions for Deriving Unit Hydrograph

R. Rai (), S. Sarkar () and V. Singh ()

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2009, vol. 23, issue 5, 899-929

Abstract: The unit hydrograph (UH) is one of the commonly employed techniques for the determination of flood hydrographs. Since the UH satisfies all the properties of a probability distribution function (PDF), it seems logical that PDFs can be employed for deriving the UH. In practice, the gamma distribution function has been commonly employed to derive the UH. In this paper, Beta (Beta), Exponential (EXP), Gamma (GM), Normal, Lognormal (LN), Weibull (WB), Logistic (LG), Generalized logistic (GLG) and Pearson Type 3 (PT 3) distribution functions were employed for the derivation of UH. Parameters of these distribution functions were estimated using the real coded genetic algorithm optimization technique. These distributions were tested on the 13 watersheds of different characteristics and it was observed that except for the EXP distribution function, most other distribution functions produced UHs which were in satisfactory agreement with observed UHs. However, three-parameter distributions GLG, PT 3 and two parameter LG were not capable of reproducing UHs for large watersheds having drainage areas of 3,360 and 4,300 km 2 . For such large watersheds WB reproduced UHs satisfactorily. Combining the overall performance of the distributions over 13 watersheds, the order of ranking the suitability of distributions were as: GM > PT 3 > Beta ≥ GLG ≥ LN > WB. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Keywords: Genetic algorithm; Statistical distribution function; Unit hydrograph (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-008-9306-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:23:y:2009:i:5:p:899-929

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-008-9306-0

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().