New Uncertainty Concepts in Hydrology and Water Resources [Paperback]

This is an overview of uncertainty techniques, such as the use of fractals and climate change in hydrology.One of the greatest problems hydrology research faces today is how to quantify uncertainty, which is inherent in every hydrological process. This overview of uncertainty techniques places a great deal of emphasis on non-orthodox concepts, such as random fields, fractals and fuzziness.One of the greatest problems hydrology research faces today is how to quantify uncertainty, which is inherent in every hydrological process. This overview of uncertainty techniques places a great deal of emphasis on non-orthodox concepts, such as random fields, fractals and fuzziness.This volume contains an overview of conventional and nonorthodox methods of representing and analyzing aspects of uncertainty in hydrology and water resources. Topics covered include: fractals, deterministic chaos, risk and reliability related criteria, fuzzy sets, pattern recognition, random fields, time series, stochastic modeling, outliers detection, nonparametric methods, information measures, and neural networks. Many new topics are discussed that make this book particularly valuable, and they include multifractals (applied to rain), a Bayesian relative information measure as a tool for analyzing the outputs of general circulation models, and a stochastic weather generator using atmospheric circulation patterns as a means to evaluate climate change.List of authors; Preface; Part I. Introduction: 1. Hydrological uncertainty in perspective; Part II. Facets of Uncertainty: 2. Bayesian relative information measure - a tool for analysing the outputs of general circulation models; 3. A stochastic weather generator using atmospheric circulation patterns and its use to evaluate climate change effects; 4. Hydrological uncertainty - floods of Lake Eyre; 5. Some aspects of hydrological design under non-stationarity; 6. New plotting position rule for flood records considering historical data and palaeologic l£•