Hydrologic Record Events

This chapter provides a theoretical framework for describing the probabilistic behavior of hydrologic record events. It combines a framework for applying the theory of records to flood and other hydrologic processes, while simultaneously documenting numerous recent studies and approaches which have used the theory of records to assign probabilistic statements to extraordinary floods for the purpose of flood management and planning. The chapter summarizes the distributional properties of the flood of record and the entire upper record sequence corresponding to various commonly used probability distributions. It also summarizes the statistical properties of the recurrence time of the records, as well as the nonparametric properties of record breaking processes. Finally, the chapter summarizes a few recent case studies that have applied the theory of records to estimate the exceedance probability associated with envelope curves and which have tested out the theory of records for evaluating the independence of flood records.