Flood estimation at ungauged sites using group method of data handling in Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) have been successful in many fields such as economy, ecology, medical diagnostics, signal processing, and control systems but given a little attention in hydrology field especially for flood estimation at ungauged sites. Ungauged site basically mean the site of interest is no flood peak data available. This paper presented application of GMDH model at ungauged site to predict flood quantile for T=10 year and T=100 year. There five catchment characteristics implement in this study that are catchment area, elevation, longest drainage path, slope of the catchment and mean maximum annual rainfall. The total number of catchment used for this study is 70 catchments in Peninsular Malaysia. Four quantitative standard statistical indices such as mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE) and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (CE) are employed. Based on these results, it was found that the GMDH model outperforms the prediction ability of the traditional LR model