Date of Award

Fall 12-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Civil & Environmental Engineering

Program/Concentration

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Committee Director

Xixi Wang

Committee Member

Sandeep Kumar

Committee Member

Guohui Song

Abstract

How to consider effects of climate change on the design and management of hydrology related infrastructure is crucial but remains a challenge for sustaining resilient society. To address this challenge, existing hydrologic design procedures may need to be revised and/or redeveloped to take into account the precipitation non-stationarity resulting from climate change. Using the state of Virginia as a testbed and advanced statistical techniques such as nonparametric test, spatial autocorrelation, linear regression, distribution fitting, and spatial interpolation, this dissertation developed an innovative framework to detect the historical spatiotemporal variations of various precipitation characteristics, namely maximum precipitation intensity, precipitation amount, simple precipitation intensities, dry and wet spells, precipitation maximums, and precipitation exceedances. The results indicated that the state of Virginia has been experiencing more storms with a larger magnitude, a longer duration, and a greater intensity, making it vital to revisit the existing water management policies and engineering design standards. In this regard, next-generation probability-based IDF curves that consider the precipitation non-stationarity were created using both historical and predicted precipitations for Virginia. Such IDF curves can be a handy and useful tool for practical engineers to size hydraulic structures under nonstationary climates.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/aa1p-nd39

ISBN

9798762197250

ORCID

0000-0002-4411-3862

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