Dam safety: an evaluation of some procedures for design flood estimation

Abstract

This paper analyses a number of aspects related to the estimation of the design flood for a dam. A new approach to the estimation of the probable maximum precipitation (PMP) is described which takes advantage of the spatial variability of precipitation by using radar-derived distributed rainfall measurements. Procedures which utilize storm transposition and storm maximization are introduced to estimate the probable maximum flood (PMF) and are compared with regionalized statistical methods based upon the Wakeby and generalized extreme value distributions.