An Analysis of The Unit Hydrograph Peaking Factor, Virginia

Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 15 (2018) 31–48
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Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ejrh
An analysis of the unit hydrograph peaking factor: A case study in

T
Goose Creek Watershed, Virginia
⁎
Nawa Raj Pradhan , Drew Loney
Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, 3909 Halls Ferry Road, Vicksburg, MS, 39180-6199,
United States
AR TI CLE I NF O AB S T R A CT
Keywords: Study region: Goose Creek Watershed, Loudoun County, Virginia, USA.
Unit hydrograph peaking factor Study focus: Existing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) policy suggests that the unit hy-
Dam safety drograph peaking factor (UHPF) – taken as the unit hydrograph peak of any flood runoff, in-
Return period rainfall cluding the probable maximum flood, over unit hydrograph peak of the inflow design flood (IDF)
Nonlinear scaling relationship
– range between 1.25 and 1.50 to ensure dam safety. It is pertinent to investigate the impact of
extreme flood events on the validity of this range through physically based rainfall-runoff models
not available during the planning and design of most USACE dams. The UHPF range was ana-
lyzed by deploying the Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA) model.
New hydrological insights: This study concludes that design events with return periods greater
than 5-years are required for the UHPF to fall within the guidance range and that UHPF becomes
less sensitive to rainfall intensity with increasing accumulation time. An effective rainfall factor
(ERF) is introduced to validate existing UHPF guidance as well as provide a nonlinear UHPF
scaling relation when effective rainfall does not match that of the UH design event. Finally, a
method for quantifying the effect of hydrologic parameter and precipitation magnitude un-
certainty on UHPF are demonstrated. The Goose Creek facility is shown to maintain dam safety
given current UHPF guidance as it was designed using 25-year return-period rainfall.
1. Introduction
1.1. Background
In the past, the most common rainfall-runoff models used in the U.S. for dam construction (USACE, 1959, 1963, 1993) employed
the unit hydrograph (UH) theory (Sherman, 1932). Dam safety modeling guidelines from across the world specify or recommend the
use of simplified hydrograph estimating routines such as the unit hydrograph (UH) method (Institute of Hydrology, 1999; Pilgrim,
1987). According to Sherman (1932), who originally proposed the UH concept, the UH of a watershed is the outflow resulting from
one unit of direct runoff generated uniformly over the drainage area at a uniform rainfall rate during a specified period of rainfall
duration. This implies that the ordinates of any hydrograph resulting from a quantity of runoff-producing rainfall of unit duration
would be equal to corresponding ordinates of a UH for the same areal distribution of rainfall, multiplied by the ratio of rainfall excess
values. For the past 50 years, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) practice has been to increase the peak of a UH linearly in
relation to the observed rainfall by an additional 25%–50% when the observed rainfall excess is significantly greater than the
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: nawa.pradhan@usace.army.mil (N.R. Pradhan).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2017.11.007
Received 1 August 2017; Received in revised form 17 November 2017; Accepted 21 November 2017
Available online 06 December 2017
2214-5818/ Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
N.R. Pradhan, D. Loney Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 15 (2018) 31–48
modeled rainfall excess used to create the UH (USACE, 1991). This multiplicative factor is typically referred to as the unit hydrograph
peaking factor (UHPF).
The USACE policy contained in ER 1110-8-2 (FR) (USACE, 1991) requires that dams “designed, constructed, or operated by the
USACE will not create a threat of loss of life or inordinate property damage.” For a dam to be considered “hydrologically adequate”
and in compliance with USACE policy, an appropriate embankment, spillway, and regulating outlet must be designed to safely pass
an Inflow Design Flood with adequate freeboard if such a structure is necessary. USACE engineering practice utilizes extreme flood
events to evaluate and manage flood risk at most dams. Extreme flood events are those events defined by large magnitudes and long
return periods. However, it is unclear whether the simplifications employed for selecting design extreme flood events has led to over
or under estimations of the watershed runoff and, in turn, over or under estimations of the required dam size. It is thus pertinent to
investigate the impact of extreme flood events using physically based rainfall-runoff models that were not available during the design
and construction of most USACE dams to improve dam safety estimates.
Natural variability of environmental systems often causes linear transfer functions (Childs, 1958; Minshall, 1960; Ding, 1974;
Kokkonen et al., 2004), as assumed in UH theory, to poorly characterize the range of possible outcomes from the same initial state.
Linear transfer functions may be invalid due to multiple factors such as: differences in the varying antecedent initial conditions such
as soil moisture (Pradhan et al., 2012; Hendrickx et al., 2016); runoff generation processes like infiltration excess (Downer and
Ogden, 2004); saturation excess (Pradhan and Ogden, 2010); and hydro-geomorphology, urbanization, and land use change (Ogden
et al., 2011). In most extreme flood investigations, the UHPF is rarely analyzed thoroughly in the context of natural watershed
variability. Variability ultimately manifests as uncertainty in the relationship between precipitation and flood likelihood. A thorough
analysis method relating hydrologic variables to the UHPF is essential to remove the assumption of linear behavior imposed by
commonly employed empirical modeling methods. The analysis should also consider and quantify any uncertainty to provide con-
fidence information to decision makers.
Physically based hydrologic modeling is capable of evaluating the non-linearity of a watershed response (Szilagyi, 2007). The
Gridded Surface/Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA) model is a distributed-parameter, physically based numerical model that
has been used by the USACE in engineering hydrology (Downer et al., 2016); erosion (Downer et al., 2015); contaminant/nutrient
fate and transport (Pradhan et al., 2014); as well as storm surge studies (Massey et al., 2013). Deploying a physically based hydrologic
model will account for nonlinear watershed hydrological properties (Szilagyi, 2007) as well as assist in developing a methodology to
analyze/improve the estimation of UHPF (USACE, 1991) and rainfall excess relationships in different climatic regions of continental
United States (Wolock et al., 2004).
1.2. Purpose
This study investigates the rainfall event magnitude associated with a USACE recommended UHPF range between 1.25 and 1.5 to
develop a relationship between UHPF and excess rainfall for the Goose Creek, Virginia study area using the GSSHA hydrologic model.
An UHPF scaling relationship for events of differing effective rainfalls is also provided to validate and supplement existing UHPF
design guidance. Lastly, a method for quantifying the effect of hydrologic parameter and precipitation magnitude uncertainty on
UHPF are demonstrated to quantify UHPF confidence intervals. A dam design deficiencies and modifications studies based on hy-
drologic analysis (USACE, 1993) are not in the scope of this study.
2. Study area and data
2.1. Study area
The Goose Creek watershed, shown in Fig. 1, was selected as the study area. The principal reason for selecting this watershed is a
study by USACE (1963) provides baseline UH data along with the standard practice in deriving the UH, both of which are necessary to
study the UH peaks for events of differing effective rainfalls and to develop the UHPF scaling relationship. USACE (1963), derives the
standard UH in the Goose Creek watershed in Loudoun County, VA (Latitude: 39.019; Longitude: 77.577; Area: 878 km2). The
objectives of the 1963 study were the following:
• to collect the maximum available information on UH methods and UH data

• to provide standardized methods, terminology, and forms for the presentation of UHs
• to present the accumulated data and information in a form useful to hydrologists.
The study area is in the eastern United States, bounded by the Potomac River and Maryland on the northeast, draining eastward
into the Potomac River. The climate of Virginia is diverse and varies from warm and temperate in the eastern coastal areas, which
have temperatures moderated by the Atlantic Ocean, to the cooler continental climate of the mountainous counties in the north and
west (Sanford et al., 2011). The mean annual temperature is between 12 and 13 °C. The rainfall pattern varies across Virginia and is
affected by topography in the north and west and by the presence of tropical moisture systems in the south and east. The mean annual
precipitation in the study area is 1067 mm. Temperature and rainfall are adequate to support a substantial agriculture industry, with
crop and pasture lands evenly scattered between forests of mixed deciduous and evergreen trees across most of Virginia including the
watershed (Sanford et al., 2011).
32
Fig. 1. Goose Creek watershed (in Loudoun County of Virginia).
2.2. Data sources
The hourly precipitation data was obtained from Dulles International Airport in Dulles, VA (ID No. Coop – 448903), (COOP,
2017). The airport is approximately 6 km away from the study watershed. The discharge data at the outlet in Fig. 1 were from U.S.
Geological Survey Hydro- Climatic Data Network, Station No. 1644000 (Slack and Landwehr, 1992). Land use data was obtained
from the National Land Cover Database (Homer et al., 2015). The soil data were obtained from the Natural Resources Conservation
Service, Soil Survey Geographic Database (Soil Survey, 2017). The probable maximum precipitation (PMP) estimates were obtained
from the Hydrometeorological Report No. 51 (USDoC, 1978).
Historical precipitation for Goose Creek is well characterized by the Precipitation Frequency Atlas 14, Volume 2, of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (NOAA, 2017). The Precipitation Frequency Atlas is the standard source of his-
torical extreme precipitation information available in the continental United States. The return period precipitation was estimated
from the NOAA Frequency Atlas 14.
3. Methodology
Two different methods were used to derive UHs for the Goose Creek watershed:
• Utilizing historic discharge and rainfall data

• Utilizing GSSHA to perform two-dimensional (2D) watershed modeling to derive a UH from the return period events and the PMP
event.
3.1. Utilizing historic discharge and rainfall data to derive UH
As per UH theory, the following steps were taken to derive a UH from the observed discharge:
33
Fig. 2. Deriving a UH for the Goose Creek watershed.
1 Separate the base flow from the observed streamflow hydrograph to obtain the Direct Runoff Hydrograph QDRH. The steps for
base flow separation as per Linsley et al. (1975) are as follows:
a Identify when direct runoff begins (i.e., end of the base flow-only period).
b Estimate the duration of the direct runoff period using the empirical relationship below:
N = 0.8A0.2 (1)
where N is the time from the peak of the hydrograph to the point where the direct runoff finishes in days; A is the basin area in square
kilometers (Linsley et al., 1975). Linsley et al. (1975) empirical formula could be complemented with other methodologies based on
the use of numerical filter-methods (Willems, 2009) or on the analysis of the recession limb (Gabriel-Martin et al., 2017).
1 Draw a line connecting the start of the rising limb and the inflection point defined by N in Eq. (1), as shown by the ‘Base Flow’ line
in Fig. 2, for the direct runoff. This line separates the direct runoff hydrograph from base flow hydrograph. Then, compute the
volume of Direct Runoff Hydrograph, VDRH. This volume must be equal to the volume of the Effective Rainfall Hyetograph (ERH).
VDRH = ∫t QDRH (t′) dt′ (2)

where t is the time.
1 Express VDRH in equivalent units of depth, VDRHD:

VDRHD = VDRH / Abasin (3)
where Abasin is the basin area.
1 Obtain the UH by normalizing the QDRH. Normalizing implies dividing the ordinates of the QDRH by the VDRH in equivalent units of
depth in Equation (3).
UH = QDRH / VDRHD (4)
1 Determine the duration, D, of the ERH associated with the UH obtained in step 4 above.
Fig. 2 shows the derivation of the UH for the Goose Creek watershed from the December 10, 2003 observed rainfall and discharge.
Data is not often available for isolated storms of sufficient runoff volume to derive UHs. If an isolated event is not available, the
investigator must develop UHs from the records of complex storms with durations of rainfall excess that differ appreciably from the
unit duration desired. In Fig. 2, the 6 h UH was derived from the 9 h UH from S‐hydrographs (USACE, 1963). The guidelines for
computation of S-hydrographs and derivation of UHs from S-hydrographs is found in USACE (1963).
3.2. Utilizing GSSHA to perform two-dimensional (2D) watershed modeling to derive a UH
This study deploys the GSSHA model to transform extreme event rainfall events and PMP into corresponding design discharges.
GSSHA computes one-dimensional (1D) infiltration, 2D overland flow, and 1D stream flow to simulate the overland runoff to streams
and channel transport process to catchment outlet. The Green and Ampt infiltration scheme (Green and Ampt, 1911) was employed to
simulate the partitioning of input precipitation at the land surface. The runoff generated in each computational grid cell flows to
adjacent cells through a 2D finite volume numerical scheme. A 30 m grid size was selected that resulted in 973163 computational
grids within the catchment. Surface runoff is coupled to channel routing where lateral inflow from surface runoff grid cells is
34
Fig. 3. Goose Creek watershed physical characteristics, (a) soil and (b) land use classification.
numerically routed through a 1D finite volume scheme.
3.2.1. Infiltration model

The infiltration model partitions the rainfall forcing between infiltration and overland runoff. The rate of infiltration is governed
by the soil physical properties, which vary with the soil type. The soil map in Fig. 3a was employed to define these properties. The
following are the soil physical parameters specified in the infiltration model:
• effective porosity (cm /cm )

3 3
• field capacity (cm /cm )

3 3
• wilting point (cm /cm )

3 3
• residual saturation (cm /cm ) 3 3
• pore size distribution (cm/cm)

• saturated hydraulic conductivity (cm/hr)
• wetting front suction head (cm).
3.2.2. Routing model
GSSHA employs an explicit finite volume scheme to route water for both 1D channel flow and 2D overland flow, where flow rates
are computed based on heads and volumes are updated based on the computed flow rates. The friction slope between one grid cell
and its neighbors is calculated as the difference in water surface elevations divided by the grid cell size. Compared with the kinematic
wave approach, this diffusive wave approach allows GSSHA to route water through pits or depressions and regions of adverse slope.
3.2.3. Calibration
Single-event simulations targeting watershed runoff flood peaks rely mainly on the short-term processes of infiltration and runoff
routing where evapotranspiration is negligible relative to rainfall. As the focus of this study is a single event based runoff peaks, focus
was given to the infiltration and routing processes, defined in Sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2, for single events. Calibration of the distributed
GSSHA hydrologic model in watersheds is simplified by assignment of soils and hydraulic parameters based on a soil textural index,
given in Fig. 3a, and a land-use index, given in Fig. 3b, which limits the number of parameter values that must be estimated. In
previous GSSHA model calibrations (Ogden et al., 2011; Pradhan et al., 2014), parameter values were adjusted manually to achieve
an acceptable fit to the observed hydrograph with parameter values bounded by physical understanding and the experience with the
model. This study undertook a similar manual calibration approach for the December 10, 2003 event as shown in Fig. 4a.
Table 1 shows the infiltration process parameters taken account of in this study. Apart from hydraulic conductivity, the para-
meters in Table 1 were obtained from Rawls et al. (1983) based on the soil classifications in Fig. 3a. Hydraulic conductivity in Table 1
was manually calibrated. To account for impervious land, developed areas in Fig. 3b with more than 20% impervious land cover were
assigned a significantly lower value of hydraulic conductivity, 0.0005 cm/h. This impervious developed area covers less than 3% of
the watershed.
GSSHA implements Manning’s equation to relate surface roughness to flow rate, in which case the hydraulic roughness is re-
presented by the Manning’s roughness coefficient, n. (Manning, 1891) For each land use type shown in Fig. 3b, a Manning’s
roughness coefficient was calibrated within the range of physical values. Table 2 lists the calibrated Manning’s roughness coefficients
35
Fig. 4. Goose Creek catchment GSSHA calibration and verification, (a) calibration (Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency was 90%) and (b) verification (Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency
was 72%).
Table 1
Soil properties and infiltration parameters.
Soil Type Hydraulic Capillary Head Porosity Pore Size Distribution Residual Saturation Field Capacity Wilting Point
Conductivity (cm/hr) (cm) (cm3/cm3) (cm/cm) (cm3/cm3) (cm3/cm3) (cm3/cm3)
Clay 0.004 31.63 0.380 0.165 0.09 0.379 0.15

Clay loam 0.004 20.88 0.385 0.242 0.075 0.375 0.15
Coarse sandy 0.012 11.01 0.390 0.378 0.041 0.375 0.095
loam
Fine sandy 0.012 11.01 0.390 0.378 0.041 0.370 0.095
loam
Loam 0.005 8.89 0.400 0.252 0.027 0.375 0.117
Sandy clay 0.001 21.85 0.380 0.319 0.068 0.375 0.148
loam
Sandy loam 0.012 11.01 0.395 0.378 0.041 0.375 0.095
Silt loam 0.004 16.68 0.410 0.234 0.015 0.375 0.15
Silty clay 0.008 29.22 0.395 0.15 0.056 0.378 0.15
Silty clay loam 0.008 27.3 0.410 0.177 0.04 0.376 0.15
Table 2
Land use type and overland flow hydraulic roughness.
Land use type Roughness (s/m1/3)
Water 0.045
Developed (impervious 20%) 0.3
Developed (impervious 20–49%) 0.07
Barren land (vegetation < 15%) 0.4
Deciduous forest 0.492
evergreen forest 0.492
mixed forest 0.492
Shrub 0.48
Grassland 0.45
Pasture 0.45
Cultivated 0.45
Woody wetlands 0.45
Herbaceous wetlands 0.45
36
in the study area.

The calibrated outflow hydrograph for December 10, 2003 event was compared to the observed discharge at the outlet as dis-
played in Fig. 4a. Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency in Fig. 4a was 90%.
3.3. Calibration verification
The rainfall event of 16 May, 2003, shown in Fig. 4b, was employed in GSSHA simulation to verify the model calibration. The
model parameters used in this verification were those that resulted from the model calibration of Section 3.2.3. Initial soil moisture
condition for the verification period can vary from that of the calibration period (Ogden et al., 2011). Additionally, seasonal variation
in the water table directly affects the base-flow. The field observations such as; Latron and Gallart (2008), Penna et al. (2011), Peters
et al. (2003), and various watershed modeling approach such as; Pradhan et al. (2006, 2008, 2010) suggest that higher base-flow
signifies a higher water table and the higher water-table signifies lower soil moisture deficit and higher effective soil moisture content
in the vadose-zone. The yearly, long-term, series of instantaneous discharge from the U.S. Geological Survey Hydro- Climatic Data
Network, Station No. 1644000 shows that the base-flow for the calibration period is higher than the verification period. Therefore,
the estimated effective soil moisture for the calibration period was 0.3 cm3/cm3 and that for the verification event was 0.2 cm3/cm3.
The Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency in Fig. 4b was 73%, which was deemed reasonable to employ the model in subsequent efforts. Although
the grid resolution effects on the topographic (Pradhan et al., 2006, 2008) and land-surface details (Usery et al., 2004) are not taken
into account in this study, a 30 m grid size was selected as a compromise between the number of computational grids, and the ability
to describe topographic and other geospatial details. The seasonal change of soil thermodynamics and its effect on the soil hydrologic
parameter values (Pradhan et al., 2013) was not taken into account in this study.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. UHPF analysis on 6 h accumulated precipitation
The 6 h historic cumulative event precipitation was obtained from the NOAA ATLAS 14 which gives the 1-year, 5-year, 10-year,
25-year, 50-year, and 100-year return period events in the Goose Creek watershed as shown in Fig. 5a. To derive these series, NOAA
collects precipitation measurements from all available sources, performs data correction and outlier removal, and computes extreme
event magnitudes for various durations and return periods using a Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution function fit using L-
moments to the annual maximum series. Additionally, NOAA determines data processing confidence intervals by applying a Monte
Carlo procedure to the GEV distribution to obtain the 90% confidence limit (the 5% lower bound and 95% upper bound). NOAA
confidence limits only characterize the certainty of the data processing technique used to obtain the return period estimates. Ad-
ditional sources of uncertainty, such as gage clustering and imperfect historical knowledge, are not represented and would only
increase the NOAA-calculated uncertainty limit. Even so, the user of GEV data should account for the statistical confidence during
hydrologic analysis. The NOAA confidence intervals at each return period were applied to the watershed and are given in Fig. 5a.
NOAA Precipitation Frequency Atlas also provides the temporal event profiles. Event accumulation rates were determined by
applying a fixed window at the selected duration to the precipitation series. The deciles of the accumulation rate for each duration are
provided graphically from these events. In addition, the event temporal distributions are further divided into quartiles by magnitude
with the accumulation deciles calculated for each magnitude quartile. Design return period events were created by choosing 6 h
accumulation return period precipitation magnitudes in combination with an appropriate temporal distribution provided by the
NOAA PFDS.
The return period events along with the PMP event were used as input conditions for the calibrated GSSHA model, the results of
which are shown in Fig. 5a. Fig. 5b shows the GSSHA model runoff simulation of the return period events. Fig. 5c shows the UH
obtained from the GSSHA model runoff simulations in Fig. 5b. The procedure followed in deriving the UH in Fig. 5c is described in
Section 3.1 where the GSSHA-simulated runoff was utilized instead of observed runoff.
Table 3 shows the UHPF derived in terms of 0.25-year return period to 100-year return period. The values under the headings
“Peaking Factor in terms of X-year Return Period,” are the UHPFs representing the X-year return period, where X ranges from 0.25 to
100. The X-year return period UHPFS in the rows are the UH peak values of the corresponding event types under heading “Event
type” normalized by UH peak value for that X-year return period. UH peak values are defined under heading “Unit hydrograph peak.”
For example, if the X is 0.25, all the UH peak values, from 0.25-year return period to PMP, are divided by the UH peak value of 0.25-
year return period that is 112.6 cm/s/cm in Table 3. Therefore, Table 3 represents a sensitivity analysis of the UHPFs to the return
period used to normalize the peak of the UHs.
Fig. 6 was developed to illustrate Table 3, where four bands are defined based on the UHPF value: “Safe” if the UHPF is less than
1.0; “Moderately Safe” if between 1 and 1.3; “Critical” if between 1.3 and 1.5; and “Risky” if exceeding 1.5. Fig. 6 shows that the UHs
developed from events at or above the 5-year return period are well within the 1.25–1.5 UHPF range. The UHs developed from 5-year
return period and above fall into either the Safe or Moderately Safe band in Fig. 6. Table 3 and Fig. 6 also show that the UHPF from
the 1-year return period rainfall UH is close to 1.5 at the PMP. In other words, the 1-year return period UH may fall into the Critical
band, as shown in Fig. 6. Table 3 and Fig. 6 show that UHPF from UH of the 0.25-year event is greater than 1.5 at PMP. That is, a
0.25-year return period UH may fall into the “Unsafe” band, as shown in Fig. 6.
This case study in the Goose Creek watershed found that the upper limit of the UHPF for the UH peak published in the USACE
(1963) report was 0.9 and that for the UH in Fig. 2 was 1.4. The average rainfall published in the USACE (1963) report was 135
37
Fig. 5. 6 h Precipitation and model catchment hydrological information. (a) NOAA Atlas 14; 6 h return period precipitation event temporal distribution estimation in
the study area (b) NOAA 50th percentile return period discharge from GSSHA simulations (c) NOAA 50th percentile return period UH from GSSHA simulations.
millimeters (mm) in 36 h. This rainfall is equivalent to 25-year return period rainfall as per the PFDS report. The peak of the derived
6 h UH for the USACE (1963) published report was 189 m3/s/cm. The rainfall for Fig. 2 was 42 mm in 12 h, which is equivalent to 1-
year return period rainfall as per the PFDS report.
4.2. UHPF analysis on 24 h accumulated precipitation
The 24 h historic cumulative event precipitation was also obtained from the NOAA ATLAS 14 PFDS. The PFDS gives the 1-year, 5-
year, 10-year, 25-year, 50-year, and 100-year return period events in the Goose Creek watershed as shown in Fig. 7a. Design return
period events were created by choosing 24 h accumulation return period precipitation magnitudes in combination with an appro-
priate temporal distribution provided by the NOAA PFDS.
The return period events are shown in Fig. 7a along with the PMP event that were employed in the Goose Creek GSSHA model.
Fig. 7b shows the runoff calculated by the GSSHA simulations for each of the return period events. Additionally, Fig. 7c shows the UH
obtained from the GSSHA runoff simulations in Fig. 7b. The procedure followed in deriving the UH in Fig. 7c is given in Section 3.1
where the GSSHA-simulated runoff was utilized instead of historical observed runoff.
Similar to Table 3, Table 4 represents a sensitivity analysis of the UHPF to the return period used to normalize the peak of the
UHs. Fig. 8 was developed to illustrate Table 4.
In comparison to Fig. 6, Fig. 8 shows that the UHPF for all combination of extreme rainfall events are well under the “Moderately
Safe” limit of 1.3. In Fig. 8, even a 0.25-year return period UH may falls into the “Moderately Safe” band. This analysis from Fig. 8
therefore shows that UHPF is less sensitive to the rainfall intensity as the design/considered rainfall accumulation duration gets larger
in the Goose Creek watershed.
38
N.R. Pradhan, D. Loney
Table 3
Derivation of the UHPF in terms of GSSHA-simulated NOAA 50th percentile 0.25-year return period to 100-year return period in the Goose Creek Catchment.
Event Type UH Peak (m3/s/cm) Peaking Factor in Terms of
0.25-year Return Period 1-year Return Period 5-year Return Period 10-year Return Period 25-year Return Period 50-year Return Period 100-year Return Period
0.25-year Return Period 112.600 1.000 0.939 0.840 0.811 0.777 0.767 0.732
1-year Return Period 119.900 1.065 1.000 0.895 0.863 0.827 0.816 0.780
39
PMP 170.400 1.513 1.421 1.272 1.227 1.175 1.160 1.108
Fig. 6. UHPF sensitivity analysis chart from 6 h return period GSSHA simulations.
4.3. Development of the UHPF and effective rainfall relationship
A UH is derived from and valid for a specific set of storm properties interacting with a specific set of watershed properties. The
practicalities of engineering analysis often require application of this limited UH to other conditions beyond which it was originally
derived, including cases such as differing antecedent conditions or spatial precipitation distribution. Use of a UH under non-derived
conditions is valid only for a fully linear watershed without any randomness generating uncertainty.
A common UH use is the scaling of the UH peak when the effective rainfall of a considered event exceeds that of the design event.
USACE practice has been to linearly increase the peak of a UH by an additional 25% to 50% when the rainfall excess of a considered
event is significantly greater than the design runoff used to derive the UH (USACE, 1991). This scale factor is intended to maintain a
conservative design by correcting the UH for the nonlinear and uncertain watershed response. However, there is neither doc-
umentation underlying this recommendation nor guidance which defines the specific scale factor to be employed in scaling the UH to
a larger magnitude event.
This study introduces the effective rainfall factor (ERF) which is the ratio between the effective rainfall of a considered event and
that of the design event for the same duration. When the ERF is less than one, the considered event is of lower magnitude than the
design event. An ERF greater than one implies that the considered event is of larger magnitude than the design event. ERF provides a
means by which to relate the amount of design event exceedance to the peaking factor. Utilizing the effective rainfall from the GSSHA
simulations given in Tables 3 and 4, ERF can be plotted as a function of peaking factor by again varying the return period of the
design event. Collapsing all return periods onto a unique curve for each event duration yields a power scaling relationship as shown
in Fig. 9. The UHPF has a strong dependence on the ERF with some increased scatter around the trend as the ERF becomes large,
produced by the short duration events. The average UHPF for short duration events is greater than long duration for higher ERF,
following intuition as rainfall will have less opportunity to infiltrate.
Fig. 9 facilitates evaluation of the USACE design practice for scaling the UH as a function of effective rainfall. An event with ERF
of 1.5 is an event 50% larger than the design event. Applying UH theory should result in a UHPF of at least 1.5 in a fully linear system
response prior to the additional USACE adjustment. Fig. 9 shows that the predicted UHPF for ERF is under 1.15 for the 6 h event. The
lower predicted UHPF compared to UH theory is present across the all ERF values greater than one. Less than ERF of one, the trend is
reversed with higher peaking factors being predicted. This difference in the predicted UHPF results from the nonlinearity of the
watershed response captured by the distributed hydrologic model. In the exceedance of the design event, the USACE design scaling
practice is highly conservative.
The process displayed in Fig. 9 can be used to improve design processes employing UH methods to correct UHPF estimates for
nonlinear behavior. With study across additional watersheds using distributed hydrologic modeling, the UHPF dependence on ERF
can be better characterized to establish a UHPF band for each event duration. The UH ERF can then be directly calculated from the
precipitation depth of the design event and that of the considered event. The UH ERF value can then be utilized to determine the
UHPF range, with the final design value being a percentile in that UHPF range.
The 6 h and the 24 h cumulative precipitation was selected in this study for return period events as a compromise between rainfall
duration, intensity and areal distribution relationships. Areal rainfall patterns depend on the cumulative rainfall duration considered.
For areas of 500 km2 to 800 km2 the spatial standard deviation of hourly rainfall from the mean is 50% higher than that for 24 h
rainfall (U.S. Weather Bureau, 1957–1960). This shows that low accumulation duration rainfall with higher spatial non-uniformity is
40
Fig. 7. 24 h Precipitation and model catchment hydrological information. (a) NOAA Atlas 14; 24 h return period precipitation event temporal distribution estimation
in the study area (b) NOAA 50th percentile 24 h return period UH from GSSHA simulations (c) NOAA 50th percentile 24 h return period discharge from GSSHA
simulations.
not suitable from the unit hydrograph theory point of view. On the other hand, rainfall intensity is significantly reduced as the
accumulation duration is increased (De Paola et al., 2014; Elsebaie, 2012; Mirhosseini et al., 2014). Detail study of this rainfall
duration, intensity and areal relationship is significant for generalization/regionalization of the relationships developed in Fig. 9.
Expansion of present analysis to regional UHPF dependence on ERF is left to subsequent efforts.
4.4. Land use uncertainty analysis
As a simplification, the UHPF is often considered independent of both the storm and watershed properties. The assumption of
storm independence, as shown in the previous sections for the storm return period, can lead to a lack of understanding of the design
safety by underestimating discharge variability. This lack of understanding extends readily to other storm and watershed parameters
that may have an equal influence on the UHPF. It is therefore important to utilize an approach which captures these properties as part
of the UHPF analysis.
As an example of parametric UHPF analysis, a case was examined for land use variability in the Goose Creek watershed to
simulate both uncertainty in the spatial distribution of land use and increasing urbanization. In the present case study, the actual
impervious area is less than 3% of the catchment area. It was assumed that the watershed had urbanization levels of 0.1%, 1%, 5%,
10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, and 75% of land area represented by the fraction of cells in the domain that were considered impervious
to infiltration. Five synthetic infiltration maps were created for each urbanization level, with cells in each coverage selected at
random to be impervious. Cell selection was done by weighting the probability of drawing a cell inversely proportional to the
distance from the outlet until the level was met. Those cells that were closer to the watershed entrance were therefore more likely to
be chosen; this was intended to represent real world cases where watersheds tend to urbanize from the downstream to the upstream.
Tables 2 and 3 were employed to define the parameter values of modified land use maps. Each land use map was exposed to the same
design storm event to isolate land use affects alone.
41
N.R. Pradhan, D. Loney
Table 4
Derivation of the UHPF in terms of GSSHA-simulated NOAA 24 h 50th percentile 0.25-year return period to 100-year return period in the Goose Creek Catchment.
Event Type UH Peak (m3/s/cm) Peaking Factor in Terms of
0.25-year Return Period 1-year Return Period 5-year Return Period 10-year Return Period 25-year Return Period 50-year Return Period 100-year Return Period
0.25-year Return Period 112.600 1.000 0.928 0.869 0.851 0.835 0.823 0.816
42
PMP 137.000 1.217 1.129 1.057 1.035 1.016 1.001 0.993
Fig. 8. UHPF sensitivity analysis chart from 24 h return period GSSHA simulations.
Fig. 9. Development of the UHPF and effective rainfall relationship from the 6 h and 24 h duration rainfall simulations.
Fig. 10 shows the result of the analysis for each of the considered land use percentage. The right axis, given by the solid blue line,
shows the mean discharge of the five samples at each land use percentage. The left axis, given by the dotted red line, provides the
standard deviation at each land use percentage. Each quantity is given as a function of the event time. The mean value remains
largely unchanged across the events with standard deviations under 0.009 m3/s. This low value of standard deviation along with
stable mean value shows that land use change effects on flood peaks are subdued during extreme rainfall events due to higher soil
moisture and lower infiltration capacity as reflected by Ogden et al. (2011). Though the mean in across events is similar, the standard
deviation varies within the individual events. Some land use percentages have the peak in standard deviation concurrently with the
peak mean discharge; others have standard deviation peaks offset from the mean peak. Such changes are important for understanding
the peak event timing as there may be range of times over which the peak can occur. Taken together, the mean and standard
deviation curves in combination represent a two-dimensional surface of the possible values the hydrograph could take as a function of
event time and the independent variable of land use.
This type of parametric analysis provides insight into how to select hydrographs for UHPF analysis in the presence of variability
43
Fig. 10. Variably in discharge for the Goose Creek model at the watershed outlet as a function of event time and impervious land user percentage. The right blue axis,
given by the solid line, is the mean hydrograph. The left red axis, given by the dotted line, represents the standard deviation. (For interpretation of the references to
colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
and uncertainty of storm and watershed parameters. By selecting the most critical storm and watershed properties for a watershed of
interest, curves such as Fig. 10 can be developed. The extent to which the variable space was explored would depend largely on the
strength of the hydrograph dependence on each property, the computation power, and the parameter selection techniques. When this
was fully explored, a hydrograph would be produced that was at a given percentile of each of the independent variables. The
percentile would be chosen based on the amount of risk able to be accepted at the considered location. Because this nature of the
dependence will vary greatly among watersheds, a detailed demonstration of this technique is left as part of follow-on efforts.
4.5. Precipitation magnitude uncertainty analysis
An additional source of UHPF uncertainty results from the variable precipitation magnitude of the selected reference event. Use of
a single, deterministic reference event to establish an acceptable UHPF implies that the full flood and precipitation frequency curves
are known with certainty. As complete historical and meteorological knowledge is rarely available, probabilistic techniques can be
used to capture the various sources of uncertainty to establish a UHPF confidence interval. The range and maximum value of the
interval can then be incorporated as part of a dam safety assessment as a measure of risk or utilized as outlined in Section 4.4.
NOAA Atlas 14 provides three precipitation magnitudes occurring at the 5th, 50th, and 95th confidence intervals that equally
satisfy the event return period as a result of its Monte Carlo data analysis. Selection of any depth that lies on the interval would be an
acceptable event to represent the return period of interest. The range of the calculated precipitation magnitude data analysis
44
Fig. 11. UHPF as a function of return period and data processing uncertainty interval for the precipitation depths specified by NOAA Atlas 14 that were applied to the
hydrologic model. The black line gives the 50th percentile UHPF with lower and upper bars giving the 5th and 95th percentiles, respectively.
confidence intervals is a proxy for the amount of risk accepted by an installation if data processing uncertainty is not considered when
calculating the UHPF. If a precipitation depth and resulting flood at a low confidence interval is utilized as the design event, the UHPF
may be underestimated, resulting in an unsafe design. Similarly, if a precipitation depth and flood at a high confidence interval is
utilized as the norming event, a design may be overly conservative leading to increased construction/maintenance costs.
The effect of data processing uncertainty on UHPFs at Goose Creek was determined by applying the 5% and 95% confidence
interval precipitation depths to the watershed in addition to the 50% value. Fig. 11 shows the variation in the UHPF at each return
period, normalized to the 5-year, 50th percentile value. The 50th percentile is given by the black line; the 95th percentile is given by
the upper error bar and the 5th by the lower error bar. The difference between the 5th and 95th percentile is as large as 0.052 for the
50-year return period, 4.7% of the 50th percentile value. While not evident directly at the Goose Creek watershed, this difference in
the selected precipitation depth due to data processing uncertainty alone is sufficiently large that it could cause some reference events
to become inadequate at maintaining a UHPF below 1.5 at other watersheds. The large difference between the percentiles supports
greater conservativeness in choosing the precipitation depth confidence level used to establish UHPFs.
Knowledge of the UHPF as a function of return period permits inverse calculation for the return period associated with a desired
UHPF magnitude. This knowledge is again useful as a proxy for the amount of risk accepted during a UHPF analysis. As excess
precipitation is approximately linear with increasing precipitation depth, a simple logarithmic transform is typically sufficient to
extrapolate the UHPF beyond modeled return periods. By taking the normalization events at increasing confidence intervals to obtain
the UHPF trend and extrapolating the return period at the desired UHPF, a range of return periods can be established from lowest
(safest) to highest (least safe). The return period range informs one as to how sensitive the analysis is to the normalization value.
Equally the lowest range value can determine if a design is sufficiently conservative to meet the return period requirements at the
maximum accepted UHPF.
The procedure above can be applied to determine a return period associated with the PMP as well as the commonly utilized
maximum UHPF value of 1.5. Although by definition the PMP does not have a return period, it is nonetheless a useful exercise. The
intersection of the UHPF trend lines at each percentile with the UHPF evaluated at the PMP represents the location where the curve in
Fig. 11 becomes asymptotic. The magnitude of the return period at the intersection characterizes the maximum protection of the
system under the assumptions used to formulate the UHPF analysis. Table 5 gives the expression for the trend line at each confidence
percentile in Fig. 11 as well as the coefficient of determination. The fit to each trend line, and in particular the 50th percentile,
correlates highly to the calculated UHPFs.
The return period for the PMP UHPF and UHPF of 1.5 are approximated by inverting each function in Table 5 to solve for the
return period as a function of the UHPF. The results for each percentile are given in Table 6. A lower uncertainty percentile results in
a larger return period for the PMP and UHPF of 1.5. This follows intuition as a longer return period is required for smaller magnitude
45
Table 5
Equations of fit for the UHPF analysis in Fig. 11 for the considered data analysis confidence intervals.
Percentile Function R2
5th PF (y ) = 0.0468 ln(y ) + 0.9066 0.9909

50th PF (y ) = 0.0495 ln(y ) + 0.9993 0.9993
95th PF (y ) = 0.0467 ln(y ) + 0.9532 0.9837
Table 6
Return period for the PMP and maximum accepted UHPF as calculated by inverting the functions fit the UHPF/return period relationship. The form of each
function is given in Table 5.
Percentile PMP Return Period (years) Maximum Peaking Factor (1.5) Return Period (years)
5th 2441 321093

50th 1173 118280
95th 915 121635
events to reach the same UHPF. The 50th and 95th percentiles show reversed behavior for the maximum UHPF. This inversion is a
result of the variability in the Monte Carlo procedure used by NOAA to establish the confidence intervals. Their difference, however,
is not as great as the difference between either and the 5th percentile. The 5th percentile predicts almost a three times greater return
period at the maximum accepted UHPF than the 50th and 95th percentiles. A similar magnitude difference is also present between
the 5th and 95th percentiles of the PMP return period. The range in return period at the PMP UHPF is approximately 1500 years while
that of the 1.5 UHPF is nearly 200,000 years. The extent of both ranges demonstrates the importance of accounting for uncertainty
when conducting a UHPF analysis to ensure a conservative design.
5. Conclusions
This work utilized the GSSHA hydrologic model in the Goose Creek watershed to estimate the watershed response from design
events with various precipitation magnitudes. The calculated discharges were then used to develop the UHPF relationship with
rainfall excess.
The UH results obtained at various return periods demonstrated that the UHPF from a 5-year return period fell within 1.25–1.5
guidance. In contrast, the UH derived from events with less than 5-year return period exceeded the 1.25–1.5 UHPF guidance. It was
also found that a UHPF becomes less sensitive to the rainfall intensity as the design/considered rainfall accumulation duration gets
larger by comparing 6 h and 24 h events. As the Goose Creek UH was designed from a 25-year rainfall return period event equivalent,
it maintains dam safety given the current UHPF guidance.
In addition, this study defined the ERF to relate events of different effective rainfalls as there is no formal, validated UHPF scaling
guidance. Regardless of return period and design event magnitude, it was shown that the UHPF for an event duration is well predicted
by ERF. Moreover, it was shown that current USACE guidance to increase the UHPF by an additional 25% to 50% maintains a
conservative design in all cases. With additional study, the ERF could be utilized to develop a generalizable and regionalized UHPF
estimation methodology based on the climatic regions of continental United States which would provide guidance and quick in-
formation for prediction, flood hazard assessment, or design purposes on ungauged basins (Ding, 2011; Pradhan et al., 2016).
Finally, this study examined the effect of uncertainty in hydrologic and precipitation parameters on the predicted UHPF. A
methodology was shown for creating confidence curves from uncertain or varying hydrologic parameters. Imperfect knowledge of the
true precipitation depth at each return period must also be accounted for to ensure the reference event has a sufficiently large
magnitude to maintain dam safety. Ideally, such an uncertainty analysis would consider all sources of uncertainty from the watershed
such as antecedent conditions, storm spatial/temporal properties, and data processing decisions, which is left as a topic for further
research.
Under ideal circumstances, a fully distributed hydrologic analysis would be utilized to assess the nonlinearity and uncertainty of
the flood magnitude for each infrastructure location in a similar manner as presented here for Goose Creek. However, such analyses
are not often employed due to various project constraints, opting instead for unit hydrograph methods or one-dimensional models
which lack the same accuracy and temporal/spatial model resolutions. In the same manner as the Natural Resources Conservation
Service temporal disaggregation curves classify United States into regions whose behavior is determined by meteorological behavior,
the authors hypothesize that it should be possible to develop a classification schema for watersheds based on hydrologic properties.
These may include overlapping similarity between physical properties of catchments such as catchment size, slope, land use, soil type
with hydrological similarity based on observations or computational methods such as deterministic modeling and machine learning
(Oudin et al., 2010). Similarity of watershed behavior, in terms of parametric values, can be used to select an appropriate mean
hydrograph as well as an upper and lower percentile curve to quantify uncertainty (Yadav et al., 2007). The proposed generalized
unit hydrograph method provides the convenience of existing unit hydrograph methods and incorporates an improved understanding
of watershed behavior. The limiting factor in developing such a schema is the existence of a sufficiently large sample of distributed
hydrologic models across varied environments − for example, seasonal variability of soil thermodynamics (Pradhan et al., 2013),
46
rainfall areal distribution relationships with duration and intensity (U.S. Weather Bureau, 1957–1960; De Paola et al., 2014; Elsebaie,
2012; Mirhosseini et al., 2014) – and to assess the performance of generalized watershed regionalization. Additional research into
regionalization methods that incorporate distributed hydrologic model results is also a topic which requires subsequent investigation.
Disclaimer
The opinions or points of view expressed in this paper represent the authors’ thoughts and do not represent the official position or
policies of the US Army Corps of Engineers or the US Government.
Acknowledgments
This study was conducted for the Risk Management Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the Project “Unit Hydrograph
Peaking Analysis for Dam Safety”, Project Number: 52L3J9. Constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers are greatly
appreciated.
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An Analysis of The Unit Hydrograph Peaking Factor, Virginia

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Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 15 (2018) 31–48

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies

An analysis of the unit hydrograph peaking factor: A case study in

2. Study area and data

2.1. Study area

• to collect the maximum available information on UH methods and UH data

Fig. 1. Goose Creek watershed (in Loudoun County of Virginia).

2.2. Data sources

• Utilizing historic discharge and rainfall data

3.1. Utilizing historic discharge and rainfall data to derive UH

Fig. 2. Deriving a UH for the Goose Creek watershed.

VDRH = ∫t QDRH (t′) dt′ (2)

1 Express VDRH in equivalent units of depth, VDRHD:

3.2. Utilizing GSSHA to perform two-dimensional (2D) watershed modeling to derive a UH

numerically routed through a 1D ﬁnite volume scheme.

3.2.1. Inﬁltration model

• eﬀective porosity (cm /cm )

• ﬁeld capacity (cm /cm )

• wilting point (cm /cm )

• residual saturation (cm /cm ) 3 3

• pore size distribution (cm/cm)

Clay 0.004 31.63 0.380 0.165 0.09 0.379 0.15

Land use type Roughness (s/m1/3)

in the study area.

3.3. Calibration veriﬁcation

4. Results and discussion

4.1. UHPF analysis on 6 h accumulated precipitation

4.2. UHPF analysis on 24 h accumulated precipitation

Event Type UH Peak (m3/s/cm) Peaking Factor in Terms of

4.3. Development of the UHPF and eﬀective rainfall relationship

4.4. Land use uncertainty analysis

Event Type UH Peak (m3/s/cm) Peaking Factor in Terms of

4.5. Precipitation magnitude uncertainty analysis

5th PF (y ) = 0.0468 ln(y ) + 0.9066 0.9909

5th 2441 321093

MA, pp. 249–282. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7445-7_9.

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