STATISTICAL FACTORS RELATED TO EXTREME FLOODS

Jose D. Salas

Department of Civil Engineering

Colorado State University

Fort Collins, Co 80523, USA

The main purpose of this paper is to review and describe the current knowledge on prediction of flood events and to suggest needed research topics. Developments on flood prediction models including mixture and multivariate models are reviewed in relation to their properties and their applicability for at site single and regional flood frequency studies. Likewise, methods for estimation of parameters and flood quantiles are presented including approaches for transfer of information. In addition, criteria for model selection and procedures for treating special flood prediction problems are outlined.