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An analysis of region-of-influence methods for flood regionalization in the Gulf-Atlantic Rolling Plains

Ken Eng·Gary D. Tasker·P. C. D. Milly
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Abstract

Region-of-influence (RoI) approaches for estimating stream flow characteristics at ungaged sites were applied and evaluated in a case study of the 50-year peak discharge in the Gulf-Atlantic Rolling Plains of the southeastern United States. Linear regression against basin characteristics was performed for each ungaged site considered based on data from a region of influence containing the n closest gages in predictor variable (PRoI) or geographic (GRoI) space. Augmentation of this count based cutoff by a distance based cutoff also was considered. Prediction errors were evaluated for an independent (split-sampled) dataset. For the dataset and metrics considered here: (1) for either PRoI or GRoI, optimal results were found when the simpler count based cutoff, rather than the distance augmented cutoff, was used; (2) GRoI produced lower error than PRoI when applied indiscriminately over the entire study region; (3) PRoI performance improved considerably when Rol was restricted to predefined geographic subregions.

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Ken Eng, Gary D. Tasker, P. C. D. Milly. 2005. An analysis of region-of-influence methods for flood regionalization in the Gulf-Atlantic Rolling Plains. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-1688.2005.tb03723.x

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