Some statistics useful in regional frequency analysis

Abstract

Regional frequency analysis uses data from a number of measuring sites. A “region” is a group of sites each of which is assumed to have data drawn from the same frequency distribution. The analysis involves the assignment of sites to regions, testing whether the proposed regions are indeed homogeneous, and choice of suitable distributions to fit to each region's data. This paper describes three statistics useful in regional frequency analysis: a discordancy measure, for identifying unusual sites in a region; a heterogeneity measure, for assessing whether a proposed region is homogeneous; and a goodness‐of‐fit measure, for assessing whether a candidate distribution provides an adequate fit to the data. Tests based on the statistics provide objective backing for the decisions involved in regional frequency analysis. The statistics are based on the L moments [ Hosking , 1990] of the at‐site data.