Hydrologic model for urban catchments – Analytical development using copulas and numerical solution

Abstract

A model based on analytical development and numerical solution is presented for estimating the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the runoff volume and peak discharge rate of urban floods using the joint probability density function (pdf) of rainfall volume and duration together with information about the catchment’s physical characteristics. The joint pdf of rainfall event volume and duration is derived using the theory of copulas. Four families of Archimedean copulas are tested in order to select the most appropriate to reproduce the dependence structure of those variables. Frequency distributions of runoff event volume and peak discharge rate are obtained following the derived probability distribution theory, using the functional relationship given by the rainfall–runoff process. The model is tested in two urban catchments located in the cities of Chillán and Santiago, Chile. The results are compared with the outcomes of continuous simulation in Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) and with those from another analytical model that assumes storm event duration and volume to be statistically independent exponentially distributed variables.
Key words analytical model; urban storm water; copulas; distribution functions; bivariate models