Spatial dependence of river flooding and extreme rainfall

Keef, Caroline. 2007 Spatial dependence of river flooding and extreme rainfall. Lancaster University, Dept of Mathematics and Statistics, PhD Thesis, 347pp.

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Abstract/Summary

The extent of spatial dependence of flooding and extreme rainfall in Britain is unknown. In this thesis we develop existing extreme value theory to study this phenomenon. It is important to know the level of spatial dependence of flooding because if a flood occurs at multiple sites at the same time the consequences for (for example) the emergency services and the insurance industry can be more severe than if these floods occurred at different times. There are various features of river flow and rainfall data that complicate the estimation of extremal dependence. The two main features are the presence of missing data and the temporal dependence of the individual time series. Heffernan and Tawn (2004) developed a flexible method for modelling multivariate extreme values that can be used for a large number of variables. In this thesis we develop and extend this method to handle the presence of missing data and temporal dependence. We apply this extended method separately to river flow and rainfall data to estimate the level of spatial dependence of flooding and extreme rainfall over Britain. We find that heterogeneous regions in terms of the geology and soil types show low levels of spatial dependence. As we would expect we also find that connected rivers show a high level of dependence between them. We also find that the upland regions of Britain have low levels of spatial dependence of extreme rainfall.

Item Type:	Publication - Thesis (PhD)
Programmes:	CEH Programmes pre-2009 publications > Water > WA01 Water extremes > WA01.1 New methodologies to quantify floods, flows and droughts CEH Programmes pre-2009 publications > Water > WA01 Water extremes > WA01.3 Quantification of uncertainties, trends and risk of extremes
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	_ Hydrological Risks & Resources
Additional Keywords:	Flooding, river flow, extreme rainfall, statistical modelling, spatial dependence, temporal dependence, missing data
NORA Subject Terms:	Meteorology and Climatology Hydrology
Date made live:	12 Feb 2008 13:51 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/2287

Item Type:

Publication - Thesis (PhD)

Programmes:

CEH Programmes pre-2009 publications > Water > WA01 Water extremes > WA01.1 New methodologies to quantify floods, flows and droughts
CEH Programmes pre-2009 publications > Water > WA01 Water extremes > WA01.3 Quantification of uncertainties, trends and risk of extremes

UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:

_ Hydrological Risks & Resources

Additional Keywords:

Flooding, river flow, extreme rainfall, statistical modelling, spatial dependence, temporal dependence, missing data

NORA Subject Terms:

Meteorology and Climatology
Hydrology

Date made live:

12 Feb 2008 13:51 +0 (UTC)