SHYREG, a national database of flood frequency estimation

Irstea–“Recover” Research Unit, 3275 Route de Cézanne, CS 40061, 13182 Aix-en-Provence, France

^a Corresponding author: patrick.arnaud@irstea.fr

Abstract

SHYREG method is a regionalized method for rainfall and flood frequency analysis (FFA). It is based on processes simulation. It couples an hourly rainfall generator with a rainfall-runoff model, simplified enough to be regionalized. The method has been calibrated using all hydro meteorological data available at the national level. In France, that represents about 2800 raingauges of the French Weather Service network and about 1800 stations of the hydrometric National Bank network. Then, the method has been regionalized to provide a rainfall and flow quantiles database. An evaluation of the method was carried out during different thesis works and more recently during the ANR project Extraflo, with the aim of comparing different FFA approaches. The accuracy of the method in estimating rainfall and flow quantiles has been proved, as well as its stability due to a parameterization based on average values. The link with rainfall seems preferable to extrapolation based solely on the flow. Thus, another interest of the method is to take into account extreme flood behaviour with help of rainfall frequency estimation. In addition, the approach is implicitly multi-durational, and only one regionalization meets all the needs in terms hydrological hazards characterisation. For engineering needs and to avoid repeating the method implementation, this method has been applied throughout a 50 meters resolution mesh to provide a complete flood quantiles database over the French territory providing regional information on hydrological hazards. However, it is subject to restrictions related to the nature of the method: the SHYREG flows are “natural”, and do not take into account specific cases like the basins highly influenced by presence of hydraulic works, flood expansion areas, high snowmelt or karsts. Information about these restrictions and uncertainty estimation is provided with this database, which can be consulted via web access.