The Transformed Nonparametric Flood Frequency Analysis

Abstract

The nonparametric kernel estimation of probability density function (PDF) provides a uniform and accurate estimate of flood frequency-magnitude relationship. However, the kernel estimate has the disadvantage that the smoothing factor $h$ is estimate empirically and is not locally adjusted, thus possibly resulting in deterioration of density estimate when PDF is not smooth and is heavy-tailed. Such a problem can be alleviated by estimating the density of a transformed random variable, and then taking the inverse transform. A new and efficient circular transform is proposed and investigated in this paper.