Estimation des événements extrêmes de crue par l'analyse fréquentielle : une revue critique

Extreme flood events valuation using frequency analysis: a critical review

Université du Québec, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, INRS-Eau, Chaire industrielle en Hydrologie statistique, CRSNG, Hydro-Québec

Abstract

In 1968, the U.S. Water Resources Council recommended, for flood frequency analysis, the systematic use of the Log-Pearson type III distribution, fitted by the indirect method of moments. This recommendation was the starting point of numerous studies involving:

- proposing other parameter estimation methods for this distribution;

- taking into account other distributions, such as Generalized Extreme Value (GEV), for which Hosking (1990) [18] proposed an estimation method based on probability weighted moments (L-moments). A critical review of these theoretical developments is presented herein. The effect of separation is being discussed, as it is considered a selection criterion for representative flood distribution functions. Also, we present recent results concerning the Halphen distributions.