A wide variety of processes controls the time of occurrence, duration, extent, and severity of river floods. Classifying flood events by their causative processes may assist in enhancing the accuracy of local and regional flood frequency estimates and support the detection and interpretation of any changes in flood occurrence and magnitudes. This paper provides a critical review of existing causative classifications of instrumental and preinstrumental series of flood events, discusses their validity and applications, and identifies opportunities for moving toward more comprehensive approaches. So far no unified definition of causative mechanisms of flood events exists. Existing frameworks for classification of instrumental and preinstrumental series of flood events adopt different perspectives: hydroclimatic (large‐scale circulation patterns and atmospheric state at the time of the event), hydrological (catchment scale precipitation patterns and antecedent catchment state), and hydrograph‐based (indirectly considering generating mechanisms through their effects on hydrograph characteristics). All of these approaches intend to capture the flood generating mechanisms and are useful for characterizing the flood processes at various spatial and temporal scales. However, uncertainty analyses with respect to indicators, classification methods, and data to assess the robustness of the classification are rarely performed which limits the transferability across different geographic regions. It is argued that more rigorous testing is needed. There are opportunities for extending classification methods to include indicators of space–time dynamics of rainfall, antecedent wetness, and routing effects, which will make the classification schemes even more useful for understanding and estimating floods.

中文翻译：

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河流洪水事件的成因分类。

多种过程控制着河流洪水的发生时间、持续时间、范围和严重程度。按其成因过程对洪水事件进行分类可能有助于提高当地和区域洪水频率估计的准确性，并支持对洪水发生和强度的任何变化的检测和解释。本文对工具性和工具性前系列洪水事件的现有病因分类进行了批判性回顾，讨论了它们的有效性和应用，并确定了转向更全面方法的机会。迄今为止，对于洪水事件的成因机制还没有统一的定义。现有的洪水事件系列分类框架采用不同的视角：水文气候（事件发生时的大尺度环流模式和大气状态）、水文（流域规模降水模式和之前的流域状态）和基于水文的（通过对水文特性的影响间接考虑生成机制）。所有这些方法都旨在捕获洪水生成机制，并可用于表征不同空间和时间尺度的洪水过程。然而，很少对指标、分类方法和数据进行不确定性分析来评估分类的稳健性，这限制了不同地理区域之间的可转移性。有人认为需要更严格的测试。有机会扩展分类方法，包括降雨时空动态指标、前期湿度和路线影响，这将使分类方案对于理解和估计洪水更加有用。