Parametric Vine Copula Construction for Flood Analysis for Kelantan River Basin in Malaysia

The multivariate approach of flood characteristics such as flood peak flow (P), volume (V), and duration (D) is much beneficial in recognizing the critical behaviour of flood episodes at a river basin scale. The incorporation of 2-dimensional copulas for establishing bivariate flood dependency frequently appears, but it could be more comprehensive if we focus all the three flood characteristic simultaneously. In such circumstances, incorporation of vine or Pair-Copula Construction (PCC) could produce a better approximation of joint probability density and much practical approach in the uncertainty analysis, in comparison with conventional trivariate copula distribution. This study demonstrated the efficacy of parametric vine copula in the modelling of trivariate flood characteristics for the Kelantan River basin in Malaysia. The D-vine tree structure is selected where the Gaussian and Frank copula is recognized for bivariate flood pairs (P-V) and (P-D) pairs in the first stage, using the maximum-pseudo-likelihood (MPL) estimation procedure. Similarly, the Gumbel copula is selected in the modelling of conditioned data obtained through the conditional distribution function of bivariate copulas selected in the previous stage based on the partial differentiation, also called h-function. Finally, the full density function of the 3-dimension structure is derived and compared with the observed flood characteristics. Furthermore, tail dependence properties and behaviour of D-vine copula are also investigated, which reveals for well capturing the general behaviour of Gaussian and Frank copula fitted to flood pair (P-V) and (V-D) and reproduces the overall flood correlation structure fairely well. Both the primary ‘OR’ and ‘AND’ joint return periods for trivariate flood events are estimated which pointing that ‘AND’ joint case produces higher return value than ‘OR’ case. 

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