Regional flood frequency analysis using L-moments for the West Mediterranean region of Turkey

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate and determine hydrologically homogeneous regions and to derive regional flood frequency estimates for 47 gauged sites in the West Mediterranean River Basins in Turkey, using an index flood method with L-moments parameter estimation. Screening of the data of the gauged site is carried out based on a discordancy measure in terms of the L-moments. Initial candidate regions are established by the cluster analysis of first five L-moment statistics, using k-means method. Homogeneity of the basins is tested using simulation with a four-parameter Kappa distribution and an L-moments based heterogeneity measure. Three subregions are defined, namely the Antalya subregion, the Lower West Mediterranean subregion, and the Upper West Mediterranean subregion. Comparative regional flood frequency estimates are made for each subregion using various distributions, namely the generalized logistic, general extreme value, generalized normal, Pearson type III, generalized Pareto, kappa, and Wakeby distributions. Based on an L-moments goodness-of-fit statistic, the Pearson type III distribution is identified as the best-fit distribution for the Antalya and Lower-West Mediterranean subregions, and the Generalized Logistic for the Upper-West Mediterranean subregion. Monte Carlo simulation is used to evaluate the accuracy of the quantile estimates on the basis of the relative root-mean-square error and relative bias. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.