Quantifying compound flood event uncertainties in a wave and tidally dominated coastal region: The impacts of copula selection, sampling, record length, and precipitation gauge selection

Abstract

Coastal flooding is a growing hazard. Compound event characterization and uncertainty quantification are critical to accurate flood risk assessment. This study presents univariate, conditional, and joint probabilities for observed water levels, precipitation, and waves. Design events for 10‐ and 100‐year marine water level and precipitation events are developed. A total water level formulation explicitly accounting for wave impacts is presented. Uncertainties associated with sampling method, copula selection, data record length, and utilized rainfall gauge are determined. Eight copulas are used to quantify multivariate uncertainty. Generally, copulas present similar results, except the BB5. Sampling method uncertainty was quantified using four sampling types; annual maximum, annual coinciding, wet season monthly maximum, and wet season monthly coinciding sampling. Annual coinciding sampling typically produced the lowest event magnitude estimates. Uncertainty associated with record length was explored by partitioning a 100‐year record into various subsets. Withholding 30 years of observations (i.e., records of less than 70 years) resulted in substantial variability of both the 10‐ and 100‐year return period estimates. Approximately equidistant rainfall gauges led to large event estimate differences, suggesting microclimatology and gauge selection play a key role in characterizing compound events. Generally, event estimate uncertainty was dominated by sampling method and rainfall gauge selection.