ENVE4200/5200: Climate Change and Engineering

Assignment 4, Winter 2021

Solutions

1. (a) Constructing the IDF curve requires the calculation of the sample mean and standard
deviation of each column, as well as the appropriate frequency factor for the Gumbel
distribution. For example, for the 10-year return time,
√
− 6
k10 = (0.5772 + ln(ln(10/9))) = 1.3046. (1)
π
Note that for intensity, you need to convert from maximum precipitation by dividing by
the duration (e.g. 10 mm of rain in 10 minutes is 60mm/h). The intensity and duration
for each frequency are plotted as follows:

(b) The calculation of the runoff in the two scenarios given means finding the correct
point (the intensity for a 100 year return time of 1 hour duration) from your graph in
each of the two cases. The rational method follows:

Q = CIA (2)

The calculated runoff in the two cases is 0.000673m3 /s and 0.000626m3 /s, for a percentage
difference of 7.0%.

1
2. Trees change the local hydrograph by slowing down the run-off and providing some ad-
ditional water uptake. A paved surface will have faster run-off and therefore less of the
water will be allowed to infiltrate into the ground. The lower amount of infiltration on
a paved surface will result in a higher peak of the local hydrograph. The time between
peak precipitation and peak run-off will also be shorter. Finally, the slope of the hydro-
graph (both before and after the peak) will be larger.
3. This question was pretty open. As long as the question provided had four or more op-
tions and had the correct answer indicated, full marks were given. If the answer was
incorrect, half marks were given. If fewer than four options were provided, a half mark
was deducted for each option fewer than four (e.g. 1.5 for 3 options, 1.0 for 2 options, 0.5
for 1 option).