Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

EMPIRICAL ORTHOGONAL FUNCTION FOR SINGLE EVENT FLOODS TO ASSESS THE HOMOGENEITY OF HYDROMETRIC STATIONS

Mohammad Hossein Noori Gheidari and Salar Salkhordeh

Abstract

Design Flood performs an important role in designing hydraulic structures that failure in correct estimation of this factor may possibly lead to heavy losses and tremendous damages. The main problem in estimation of design flood is ungauged and short record length in the desired site. The regional flood frequency analysis is an effective method that is sensitive to regionalization and homogeneity of the stations. The most fundamental assumption of regional flood frequency analysis is the homogeneity of stations that their mistreatment would result in biased estimation of flood quantiles. In this study, we applied Empirical Orthogonal Functions method for the first time to investigate homogeneity of the stations and 3 equations were defined for determination of homogeneity in the stations. Results of the study imply the high accuracy of this innovative method.