Mediaspace scheduled maintenance: Aug 25, 2026 07:00 - 12:00 AM. During this time, videos will be temporarily unavailable. Check status updates.

Lecture

Estimate DDF curves

In course

ENV-221: Hydrology for engineers

This is an introductory course to key concepts and methods in physical and engineering hydrology. ...

Description

This lecture discusses the intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) relationships in hydrology, focusing on organizing point rainfall data based on storm event characteristics. Efforts have been made to generalize this information into empirical functions. The lecture extends the theory to events of any duration by interpolating Gumbel curves.

This video is available exclusively on Mediaspace for a restricted audience. Please log in to MediaSpace to access it if you have the necessary permissions.

Watch on Mediaspace

Instructors (3)

Paolo Benettin

I was born in Padova, Italy, in 1986. After high school, I started the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Padova (Bachelor and Master), where I followed the 'soil protection' curriculum. During my Master studies I spent a semester as Erasmus student at Wageningen University (Wageningen, the Netherlands) to follow courses in Hydrology. After graduation, I decided to bring my education further and I started a Ph.D. at the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Padova. My Ph.D. thesis focused on hydrologic transport and travel time distributions at the catchment scale. My contribution to the subject included both new theoretical formulations and extensive numerical applications to real catchments. During my Ph.D., I also spent 7 months as visiting research fellow at Virginia Tech University (Blacksburg, USA). Since I arrived at EPFL as post-doc in 2015, I started being involved in field and experimental activities, which allowed me to learn about practical experimental problems. In 2017 I had the opportunity to by hired by the ECHO laboratory as a permanent scientist, conducting research in the field of catchment hydrology.

Sara Bonetti

Andrea Rinaldo

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Probability distribution fitting

Probability distribution fitting or simply distribution fitting is the fitting of a probability distribution to a series of data concerning the repeated measurement of a variable phenomenon. The aim of distribution fitting is to predict the probability or to forecast the frequency of occurrence of the magnitude of the phenomenon in a certain interval. There are many probability distributions (see list of probability distributions) of which some can be fitted more closely to the observed frequency of the data than others, depending on the characteristics of the phenomenon and of the distribution.

Empirical distribution function

In statistics, an empirical distribution function (commonly also called an empirical cumulative distribution function, eCDF) is the distribution function associated with the empirical measure of a sample. This cumulative distribution function is a step function that jumps up by 1/n at each of the n data points. Its value at any specified value of the measured variable is the fraction of observations of the measured variable that are less than or equal to the specified value.

Empirical process

In probability theory, an empirical process is a stochastic process that describes the proportion of objects in a system in a given state. For a process in a discrete state space a population continuous time Markov chain or Markov population model is a process which counts the number of objects in a given state (without rescaling). In mean field theory, limit theorems (as the number of objects becomes large) are considered and generalise the central limit theorem for empirical measures.

Cumulative frequency analysis

Cumulative frequency analysis is the analysis of the frequency of occurrence of values of a phenomenon less than a reference value. The phenomenon may be time- or space-dependent. Cumulative frequency is also called frequency of non-exceedance. Cumulative frequency analysis is performed to obtain insight into how often a certain phenomenon (feature) is below a certain value. This may help in describing or explaining a situation in which the phenomenon is involved, or in planning interventions, for example in flood protection.

Fréchet distribution

The Fréchet distribution, also known as inverse Weibull distribution, is a special case of the generalized extreme value distribution. It has the cumulative distribution function where α > 0 is a shape parameter. It can be generalised to include a location parameter m (the minimum) and a scale parameter s > 0 with the cumulative distribution function Named for Maurice Fréchet who wrote a related paper in 1927, further work was done by Fisher and Tippett in 1928 and by Gumbel in 1958.

Related lectures (37)

Density Operator: Matrix to the System State

Explores density operator matrix transformation in quantum physics and the implications of measuring the system, leading to state collapse.

Density Operator: Quantum Physics II

Covers the concept of matrix to the density operator in quantum physics.

Collision Kinetics: Theory and Applications

Covers the theory and applications of collision kinetics in understanding molecular interactions.

Quantum Uncertainty: Measurement and Probability

Delves into quantum uncertainty in measurements and probabilities, contrasting classical and quantum predictions.

Quantum Information Elements