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Incorporation of Cost-Benefit Analysis Considering Epistemic Uncertainty for Calculating the Optimal Design Flood

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Abstract

Design flood via flood frequency analysis provides basic information for designing hydraulic structures. Quantification of uncertainty in flood frequency analysis has become an important issue during the past three decades. However, few studies have considered practical procedures for selecting a single design flood in the uncertainty range. Cost-benefit analysis can be incorporated to select a single design flood by calculating the optimal value in the total expected cost function. In particular, in this study, the relationship between conventional flood frequency analysis and cost-benefit analysis is addressed. Additionally, the parameter uncertainty is quantified by the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to find the optimal design floods considering parameter uncertainty. The annual maximum (AM) series and partial duration (PD) series were used to identify the effect of various types of data. The optimal design floods obtained by the cost-benefit analysis considering parameter uncertainty were systematically larger than the design flood obtained by the conventional flood frequency analysis. Regarding the types of data, the generalized Pareto distribution (GPD) had the largest values in all return periods, while the Gumbel distribution had the smallest values in all cases.

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Acknowledgments

This study has been worked with Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (2018R1D1A1B07040409).

Funding

This study has been worked with Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (2018R1D1A1B07040409).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, 24341, South Korea

    Sang Ug Kim & Cheol-Eung Lee

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  1. Sang Ug Kim
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  2. Cheol-Eung Lee
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Contributions

Sang Ug Kim performed frequency analysis with cost-benefit strategy and prepared this manuscript. Cheol-Eung Lee gave an advice on the direction of this study.

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Correspondence to Sang Ug Kim.

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Kim, S.U., Lee, CE. Incorporation of Cost-Benefit Analysis Considering Epistemic Uncertainty for Calculating the Optimal Design Flood. Water Resour Manage 35, 757–774 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-021-02764-z

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