History of the Application of Design Storm Frequency and Intensity

摘要

Traditionally, hydrologists have understood that predicting the future relies on looking to the past. The design of stormwater infrastructure is based on design storms that are quantified by an exceedance probability, also referred to as return frequencies, from 2-year to 1000-year. The determination of return frequency relies on historical storm data that is often of less length than the design storm frequency. Aided by increasingly advanced rain gage technology, the application of storm intensity and frequency in stormwater infrastructure design became commonplace. Just as hydrologists asked 100 years ago, the important question to consider is whether reliance on past information to predict the future is dependent on a probable false assumption that the future will follow the trends of past.