Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849

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Journal of Hydrology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Research papers

Estimation of intensity-duration-frequency relationships according

to the property of scale invariance and regionalization analysis
in a Mediterranean coastal area
Hanen Ghanmi a,b,, Zoubeida Bargaoui a, Ccile Mallet c
a
Universit de Tunis El Manar, Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Tunis BP 37 Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Tunis, Laboratoire de Modlisation en Hydraulique et Environnement,
Le Belvdre, 1002 Tunis, Tunisia
b
Universit de Gafsa, Institut Suprieur des Sciences et Technologies de lEnergie de Gafsa, Route de Tozeur, Gafsa, Tunisia
c
Universit de Versailles Saint-Quentin, CNRS/INSU, LATMOS-IPSL Laboratoire Atmosphres Milieux, Observations Spatiales, Quartier des Garennes, 11 Boulevard dAlembert,
78280 Guyancourt, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Usually, networks of daily rainfall raingauges have a higher spatial cover than tippet bucket raingauges
Available online 2 July 2016 networks. Consequently, it would be of high interest to make use of daily rainfall information to asses IDF
curves for unobserved locations. The present work proposes achieving this goal by using the assumption
Keywords: of simple scaling invariance. Indeed, series observed over sufficiently long periods for 10 tippet bucket
IDF curves raingauge, allowed us to test the hypothesis of simple scaling of annual maximum rainfall intensities
Simple scale invariance in northern Tunisia. This assumption, combined with Gumbel model of maximum rainfall intensities
Regionalization
allowed us to develop a methodology to estimate IDF curves from the daily rainfall totals. In fact, a
PWM
Gumbel distribution
regionalization formula which involves the percentile 90% of the annual maximum daily rainfall was
IDAF developed and validated. This regionalization formula applied to daily data of 25 rainfall stations in
the sub area of Tunis region, combined with the assumption of simple scaling has enabled us to develop
Intensity Duration Area Frequency (IDAF) curves for Tunis area.
2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction a
ITd b m 1
d h
The assessment of extreme precipitation is an important
problem in hydrologic risk analysis and design. This is why the where a, h, m and b are parameters depending on the meteorolog-
evaluation of rainfall extremes, as embodied in the intensity- ical conditions and the station location, ITd represents the rainfall
duration-frequency (IDF) relationship, has been a major focus of intensity for the duration d and return period T. In (1), Talbot
both theoretical and applied hydrology. It has a link with sewage formula corresponds to m = b = 1 and Montana formula to h = 0
water systems, dams management and inundation risk mitigation. and m = 1.
The IDF were initially established on the basis of frequency Koutsoyiannis et al. (1998) considered that the dependency in d
analysis of rainfall at a given station observed during a quite long and the dependency in T can be modeled by two separate
period, using the annual maximum of the series (AMS) or a equations:
sufficiently high values exceeding threshold (POT). In such a case, aT
the various reference time or resolutions are studied separately. ITd 2
Bd
Various forms of empirical IDF curves are found in the literature
under the following form: where the parameter a(T) can take one of two forms:

aT m h ln T 3
Corresponding author at: Universit de Tunis El Manar, Ecole Nationale aT KT c 4
dIngnieurs de Tunis BP 37 Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Tunis, Laboratoire de
Modlisation en Hydraulique et Environnement, Le Belvdre, 1002 Tunis, Tunisia. The second form is the oldest (Bernard, 1932). The American
E-mail addresses: hanen.ghanmi@gmail.com (H. Ghanmi), zoubeida.bargaoui@ formula corresponds in (1) to b = 0 and m = 1 with a(T) as specified
laposte.net (Z. Bargaoui), cecile.mallet@latmos.ipsl.fr (C. Mallet). in (3). According to Koutsoyiannis et al. (1998), the function a(T)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.07.002
0022-1694/ 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849
can be derived from the probability distribution function of the
maximum rainfall intensity. Effectively, they proposed a general
formula for IDF relationship whose forms were explicitly derived
from several distributions such as Gumbel, Generalized extreme
value (GEV), Gamma, Log Pearson III, Lognormal, Exponential,
and Pareto. A general form of a(T) reported in Koutsoyiannis
et al. (1998) and Menabde et al. (1999) is:
aT l rF 1 1  1=T 5 Moreover, it is important to integrate the IDF curves on surfaces
where l and r are respectively the scale and location parameters of
the distribution function and F the cumulative distribution function.
Montana formula was adopted to model IDF-curves relationship
in different regions of Tunisia (Thirriot et al., 1981; Saadaoui, 1986;
Zitouni, 1997). In a recent study performed by DGRE-ST2i (2007),
IDF curves using Montana, Talbot as well as the American formula
designed for Northern Tunisia. The analysis was carried out using
Hydraccess software from IRD (Hydraccess, 2000). Each series of
annual maximum rainfall intensities was adjusted separately using
the probability distribution functions: Gauss, Gumbel, Galton,
Pearson III, Pearson V, Goodrich, Frchet and WRC-USA. In the pre-
sent work, data reported in DGRE-ST2i (2007) will be adopted as
database for tipping bucket network.
Conversely to the previous IDF design framework, the various
reference time or resolutions are not studied separately in case
where the scale effect in rainfall series is considered. Indeed,
Burlando and Rosso (1996) are the pioneers who sought to apply
the assumptions of scale invariance to annual maximum series of
rainfall depth (for durations ranging from 5 to 180 min). In their
paper, the scaling and multiscaling properties of storm rainfall
depth of different durations were analyzed and a lognormal proba-
bility distribution was used to model annual maximum rainfall
depth. The key assumption is that the quantiles and moments of
any order are scale invariant. Furthermore, Bendjoudi et al. (1997)
provided a multifractal interpretation of the American formula
based on the multifractal properties of scale invariance of rainfall
series in relation to the critical order of moment divergence. The
empirically observed scaling properties of annual maxima of mean
rainfall intensity were noticed in Menabde et al. (1999) where the
most important assumption is that the cumulative distribution
function for any duration d has a standardized function form involv-
ing a function F independent of d. Based on Gumbel distribution
model, different durations d were assumed to be related through
a simple power law. Such an assumption was tested for two differ-
ent sets of data from Australia and South Africa and they proved that
annual maxima rainfall intensities are characterized by scale invari-
ance for time scales ranging from about 30 min to 24 h (Menabde
et al., 1999). Blanchet et al. (2016) extended this property for time
scales ranging from 4 to 100 h. The modeling of maximum rainfall
intensities by adopting the simple scale invariance property, as in
Menabde et al. (1999), has been investigated and adopted later by
Yu et al. (2004) as well as Bara et al. (2009, 2010). Thanks to this
assumption IDF relationship for unobserved durations have been
inferred from the daily resolution from which data series are always
the most available in practice as stressed by Yu et al. (2004).
To get spatial IDF relationship and to infer IDF from observed
sites to non-observed sites, regionalization tools were proposed
(Marand and Zumstein, 1990; Neppel, 2005). Regionalization
means the transfer of data from one catchment to another
(Bloschl and Sivapalan, 1995). Here instead of watersheds, gauged
sites are observed locations and ungauged sites are unobserved
locations. According to Hingray et al. (2009), there are two types
of regionalization in IDF studies. The first one allows setting locale
parameters constant by region. In this case the IDF are assumed
invariant within a given region. The second type consists in estab-
lishing regional estimation models that estimate, at a given site,
39
the parameters of an IDF model. In this case, IDF parameters vary
within the region. Zahar (1997) studied the spatial variability of
the parameter b in Montana formula for Central Tunisia. He linked
the parameter b of Montana formula to the ratio of fall season Gra-
dex to annual Gradex of 24 h (the Gradex is the scale parameter of
Gumbel distribution). Then he proposed the estimation of extreme
hourly rainfall statistics at a given location from the daily rainfall
statistics.
which give rise to Intensity-Duration-Area-Frequency (IDAF)
curves. The IDAF curves are obtained by separately considering
IDF (i.e. time scale) and areal reduction factor (ARF) (i.e. space
scale) components of the extreme rainfall distribution. Their com-
putation requires inferring areal rainfall distributions over the
range of space scales and timescales that are the most relevant
for catchment scale analysis. The IDAF curves are very useful since
they account the amount of rainfall in relation to a given surface
and a given return period. Such estimations are determined for
design storms and design hydraulic structures as well as for char-
acterizing the severity of storms. Ramos et al. (2005) quantified the
risk related to Mediterranean storms observed over the city of
Marseille. This approach has been adopted by Norbiato et al.
(2007) and Ceresetti et al. (2011) to quantify the severity of flash
floods occurred respectively east of the Italian Alps and Mediter-
ranean mountainous region of southern France.
De Michele et al. (2001) argued that ARF is largely influenced by
the return period especially for large values of return period.
According to Langousis (2005) and Svensson and Jones (2010),
ARF is affected by the shape of the watershed geometry, seasonal
climatic characteristics and topography. Several authors
(Veneziano and Langousis, 2005; Langousis, 2005) agreed that
the empirical curves ARF are often characterized by a scale invari-
ance behavior in space and time under specific limits. Several stud-
ies were interested in the scaling invariance of ARF/IDAF curves
and their relationship with multifractal formalism (De Michele
et al., 2001, 2002, 2011).
So, the aims of this study are firstly to develop the scaling
behavior of tipping bucket rainfall data northern Tunisia. Secondly,
it is proposed to take advantage of such approach to derive regio-
nal IDF and IDAF curves. In Section 2 databases are presented.
Methodology is developed in Section 3. Section 4 presents main
results and discussion and then the conclusion is drawn.
2. Rainfall data analysis
The study area is reported in Figs. 1 and 2. It is located Northern
Tunisia and is limited by the Mediterranean Sea northern and east-
ern. Two types of data series are investigated for the study: tipping
bucket raingauges and daily rainfall totals raingauges. Two spatial
scales are also considered. The first one is northern Tunisia which
covers 23,573 km2 (Fig. 1). The second one is Tunis area with an
extent of 2697 km2 (Fig. 2).It is a sub area of northern Tunisia.
The former is assumed as a regional scale and Tunis area as local
scale for this study. Note that the large scale area is only 10 times
greater meaning a scale ratio of roughly 3, which is quite small and
may justify the information transfer operated in the regionaliza-
tion procedure. Raingauge locations of Northern Tunisia are
reported in Fig. 1 and those belonging to Tunis area in Fig. 2. In
Tunis area, daily rainfall totals are collected from a network of 41
raingauges. So, the spatial density of this daily rainfall network is
66 km2/station. Among the 41 stations, 6 are outside the study
area. They are adopted for interpolation purposes using kriging.
One single tipping bucket raingauge series in Tunis Manoubia
station is considered in Tunis area. To get an idea of the magnitude
of the maximum rain in the Tunis area, we also introduced the map
40 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849

Fig. 1. The spatial distribution of recording raingauges over northern Tunisia (regional scale).

Fig. 2. Spatial distribution of the Tunis area rainfall network (25 raingauges).

of the 0.9 percentile of daily maximum annual rainfall (P90%) in
Fig. 3. To draw this map, sample estimates of P90% are adopted
for each location and then interpolated using kriging. On the other
hand, maximum annual rainfall intensities with various times res-
olution (ranging from 5 min to 4 h) are observed from a sparse net-
work of 15 tipping bucket raingauge covering northern Tunisia.
They are provided by DGRE-ST2i (2007). The spatial density of this
network is 1571 km2/station which is much less than the density
of the daily network. The observation period for the longest series
corresponding to Tunis Manoubia station is 18732009 (see Fig. 4).
However, most of records are in the period 19502001 as noticed
from Fig. 5 which reports the observation years station by station.
Daily totals are also available for these 15 raingauges northern
Tunisia. Table 1 reports Table 1 sizes as well as three statistics of
the samples of the annual maximum daily rainfall (in mm/24 h)
which are: the maximum (Pmax), average (Pm), the median (Pmed)
and the 90% percentile (P90%). For 13 stations out of 15 the mean
is greater than the median reflecting the dissymmetry of the series.
One single station (n 11, Ain Beya with a sample size of 17 years)
presents a very high value for the observed maximum which seems
to be an outlier.
3. Methodology
Three approaches are combined. First, the assessment of scaling
in tipping bucket series is undertaken for IDF estimation. Then, the
 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849 41

Fig. 3. Kriged maps of maximum annual daily quantile P90%.

Table 1
Rainfall statistics in tipping bucket stations and IDF curves parameters (assuming break duration 30 min).

building of a regional model is proposed in order to extend IDF
obtained from the sparse tipping bucket network to the daily net-
work of the sub area of Tunis. Mapping of results is then addressed
in order to establish IDAF curves of Tunis area.
3.1. Simple scale invariance of IDF curves
The property of scale invariance of annual maximum intensity
Id of rainfall for a duration d can be expressed by Eq. (6)
(Menabde et al., 1999; Yu et al., 2004; Veneziano and Furcolo,
2002; Bara et al., 2010):
dist
I d kk I D
where k is the scale exponent also called self-similarity index and ID
is the intensity of rain for a period D. k is the ratio of scale invariance
(k = d/D) between the known duration D and of the desired duration
d. In the present study, owing the structure of available data, the
value of D is assumed 24 h. Such behavior is called simple scaling
in the strict sense (Gupta and Waymire, 1990). This type of scale
invariance implies that the two variables Id and ID have the same
distribution function if finite moments of order q exist for both.
The relationship between qth moments of rain intensity can be
obtained after raising both sides of Eq. (6) to the power q and taking
the average of both sides:
6 hIqd i kkq hIqD i 7
42 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849

MORN_CTV
UTIQE
TUNIS CARTHAGE
SOUK_ORD
SOLIMAN SM
SOLI_ SE
SOLI_RJA
SOLIMAN ECOLE
SIDI THABET
RAOU_AGE
RADE_ PF
RADE_AFA
RADES
MORN_DIR
MORNAGUIA
MORN_YPR
Raingauges

MNIHLA
MHAMEDIA
MEGR_ITE
TUNIS MANOUBIA
MANOUBA
KALA_OUS
JDEI_CTV
HAMMEM LIF
GROMBALIA SE
GROMBALIA_DR
GAMMART
GAMM_ERE
FOUCHANA
DOMAINE
DEKHILA
CRETE VILLE
CHERFECH
CEBA_RTE
BORJ EL AMRI
BORJ CHAKIR
BEN AROUS
BATANE
AROUSSIA
ARIANA
0-------
1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
Years

Fig. 4. Time periods covered by the 41 daily raingauges of the Tunis area.

SRAYA

SILIANA

SEJNENE

SARRAT

MELLEGUE K13
Recording raingauges

HAIDRA

AIN BEYA

AIN TAGA

GHARDIMAOU

ZOUARINE

JOUMINE

SLOUGUIA

OUED TINE CASSIS

BIR MCHERGUA

TUNIS MANOUBIA

0
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Years

Fig. 5. Observed time periods for daily series available in northern Tunisia. Tunis Manoubia is the longest series.

where hi denotes the average operation, k(q) is the scale exponent
of order q. In cases where the relationship between scale exponents
of order k and the moment of order k is linear, it results in k(q) = q k1
where k1 is the scale exponent of order 1. This property is called
wide sense simple scaling (Gupta and Waymire, 1990). If the above
linear relationship does not exist, one must consider the multiple
scale invariance (Gupta and Waymire, 1990) approach. The scale
exponent, k(q) is estimated as the slope of the linear relationship
between the values of log-transformed of moments and the scale
parameters (log k) for various orders of moments (q).
To derive IDF relationships (Menabde et al., 1999), assume that
the CDF of extreme event has the standardized functional form:
 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849
! h
ITd  ld
F d ITd G 8
rd
where G is some function, independent of d.
Gumbel distribution was used to model extreme events for a
long time (Hershfield and Kohler, 1960). The disadvantage is that
it displays an exponential asymptotic behavior. Such behavior
cannot accommodate multiscaling in the sense of Gupta and
Waymire (1990). Other distributions such as log-Normal distribu-
tion or Pareto can. In general, Frechet attraction domain models
have hyperbolic (power-law) tails (El Adlouni et al., 2008). They
are convenient to scaling assumption. Despite all this, as did
several authors, we assume that rainfall maxima follow Gumbel
distribution and may be supported by temporal simple-scaling
(Ceresetti, 2011). The use of such model in semi-arid environment
was statistically justified on annual and seasonal extremes rain
samples in Central Tunisia (Zahar, 1997).
Then, in case of Gumbel distribution is retained:
" !#
ITd  ld
F d ITd exp  exp 
rd
^
ITd ld rd y
In which y^ = ln [ln (1  (1/T)] is the Standard Gumbel vari-
able of the return period T. One also assumes that the parameters
for two durations d and D are related by a scale relation Eqs. (11)
and (12):
ld k k lD
rd k k rD
where k is a simple scale invariance parameter and (k = d/D).
Accordingly, a simple relationship IDF was obtained by Menabde
et al. (1999) to design the quantile of return period T and duration
d using the Gumbel parameters corresponding to the duration D as
well as the simple scale invariance parameter k:
 k    
d 1
ITd kk ITD lD  rD ln  ln 1 
D T
Sometimes, rainfall has multi-scale behavior. Then there are
breaks in the scaling. We note by dr the duration where the breaks
of scaling is identified. Especially if there is no discontinuity
between scaling regimes, rainfall quantiles can be estimated from
daily data despite the break of scaling. In the example of two scal-
ing regimes on either side of dr we are in the case of simple multi-
scaling (or piecewise simple scaling), IDF relationships can be
presented as follows
( Once established the regression, it is applied (transferred) to
k
ITd d=D 2 lD rD ln ln1  1=T if d > dr
k1 k2
ITd d=dr dr =d lD rD ln ln1  1=T if d < dr
where ld and rd are the Gumbel distribution parameters for any
fixed d and lD and rD are those corresponding to the duration
D. Further, it is proposed to investigate the simple scaling
hypothesis for the 15 stations in study and to estimate their scale
exponents k(q).
According to Yu et al. (2004), the assumption of scale invariance
remains valid also for the probability weighted moments (PWM).
So, PWM method is considered to undertake the present analysis.
In fact, PWM method introduced by Greenwood et al. (1979) is
highly recommended by Hosking et al. (1985) and Hosking and
Wallis (1987). This method is similar to the classic method of
moments but the definition of the moment is different (Eq. (15)).
This definition takes into account the observations rows which
allow weighting the data by their probability:
43
i
Mi;j;m E xi F j x1  Fxm 15
F represents the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of Id. Then,
the moments M1,q,0 which correspond to Mq are adopted in this
study. According to Eqs. (7) and (8), the q-order PWMs of Id and
ID; denoted as Mqd and MqD ; respectively, have the relationship as:
Mqd kk M qD 16
which can be transformed by taking logarithm as:
log M qd log M qD k log k 17
Thus, further, the scaling exponent is estimated as the slope
value of linear regression relationships between the log-
transformed values of PWM (M qkd ) and scale parameters log k for
various orders of PWM (q).
Two means are adopted to verify the consistency of results. The
first method is based on Q-Qplot graphical comparison between
scaling estimation of quantiles and non-parametric estimation of
quantiles for each station and the second method adopts
9
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for goodness of fit (Massey, 1951).
10
3.2. IDF curves regionalization
Regional IDF curves are achieved using the transfer of the scale
exponents from the 15 stations of the large region to the 41 sta-
tions of the target region (Tunis area). To that purpose a regression
analysis approach is adopted. This method was recommended by
11 Yu et al. (2004). Thus, the three statistics reported in Table 1 are
12 investigated in order to select the most appropriate as proxy to
explain the scale exponents: the average (x = Pmean) or median
(x = Pmed) or the percentile 90% (x = P90%). Initially, a power function
type (Eq. (18)) is sought to represent the relationship between
these statistics used as proxy variable and the scaling exponents
estimated above. The proxy variable is denoted X. Parameters x
and b of the power law function are estimated by minimizing least
square errors.
13 x
y 18
Xb
The power law model (Eq. (18)) is calibrated using a sub group
of 8 stations out of 15 stations. The remaining stations are used to
validate the regression model. In fact, a data transformation was
finally operated; the ratio d = y/X was adopted instead of the direct
regression. So the log-log linear regression was calibrated between
d and the proxy variable X. With such a transformation, regression
residuals were found smaller.
estimate the scale exponent k, for the stations of Tunis area (small
scale region). It is a typical regionalization problem: the 15 stations
are considered as gauged station since they are tipping bucket
14 stations. The 41 stations are assumed ungauged since they dis-
play only daily data. Then, using the estimated k for the 41 stations
(Eq. (18)), the IDF curves in Tunis area are deduced from Eq. (13).
Then, these estimates are interpolated using kriging under the Arc-
View software. Here it is necessary to admit that kriging which is
in contradiction with scaling assumption and which smoothes
rainfall fields might be not really relevant at this point of the study.
However it is out of the scope of this work to select and adopt other
methods (such as extreme copula interpolation).
4. Results
For reasons of consistency, sample statistics and scale
exponents k1 and k2 are estimated from the same samples of years
as those used to estimate the IDF curves in DGRE-ST2i (2007).
44 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849

Gumbel assumption is adopted for the statistical distribution. Esti-
mated location parameter l24h and scale parameter r24h of maxi-
mum annual daily data using PWM moments with q = 0 to q = 4
are reported in Table 1. The sampling durations are: 5 min,
10 min, 15 min, 30 min, 60 min, 90 min, 120 min, 180 min,
240 min and 24 h.
Fig. 6 shows fitted regressions for Tunis Manoubia station. A
scale break at the dr = 30 min is highlighted; dr will be called refer-
ence time of rupture. Thus two ranges of scale invariance are
obtained namely: range 1 with [5 min30 min] and range 2 with
[30 min24 h]. On both sides of dr, the linear regression lines are
almost parallel. Fig. 7 which displays k1 and k2 versus the various
orders of PWM. It is clear that they are almost equal for q = 0 to
q = 4. Finally, it results in k1 = 0.49 and k2 = 0.70 (Fig. 7) for
Tunis Manoubia station.
The analysis of the 15 stations of Northern Tunisia gave rise to
the scale exponents reported in Table 1 where k1 and k2 the respec-
tive scale exponents of ranges [5 min30 min] and [30 min24 h].
The variation domain for k1 is 0.65 to 0.43 while it is from
0.89 to 0.53 for k2. For all stations but one Table 1 n11)
k1 > k2. The identification of two ranges of scale invariance is sim-
ilar to Yu et al. (2004). In fact, they found two regions among three
which are characterized by simple multiscaling with scale ruptures
observed for durations respectively d = 4 h and d = 8 h. Also, the
first scaling regime sticks with the results of Menabde who studied
the rainfall data set recorded in Australia and South Africa.
Fig. 8 reports IDF curves obtained by applying of the Eq. (14)
(solid markers) for Tunis Manoubia station with dr = 30 min. These
estimates are very close to empirical IDF (DGRE-ST2I, 2007)
(Empty markers). So, our model reproduces well the rainfall quan-
tile and this for both scaling regimes. Quantiles of rain intensity,
obtained by coupling simple scale invariance model by range with
Gumbel model, are compared to those obtained using IDF derived
from DGRE-ST2i (2007). They are very close.
4.1. IDF curves regionalization
To select the most appropriate proxy variable, minimizing the
mean coefficient of determination is assumed as criteria. In addi-
tion, the proxy variable resulting in the most reduced confidence
interval is preferred to be retained.
To ensure good moments estimations we must use only stations
having a long period of observation. Then, in order to estimate IDF
curves for a return period of T = 50, we need data at least length of
T/3 (17 years). After consideration of 17-year limit criterion, it
remains 10 stations. Finally, the stations used to regionalize the
coefficients x and b in Eq. (18) are: Tunis Manoubia, Bir Mchergua,
Joumine Antra, Zouarine Gare, Ghardimaou, Ain Taga, Hadra Poste

2
10
M0
M1
M2
1
M3
10
M4
PWM

0
10

-1
10 0 1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10 10
Duration (minutes)

Fig. 6. The relationship between the values of PWM and rainfall duration at Tunis Manoubia raingauge.

Scale exponent (5 mn-30 mn)

Scale exponent (30 mn-1 day)
-0.3

-0.4
Scale exponent

-0.5

-0.6

-0.7

-0.8

-0.9
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
PWM order

Fig. 7. Scale exponents at the various orders of PWM for Tunis Manoubia station.
 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849 45

3
10
T=2 years
T=5 years
T=10 years Solid markers :
T=20 years Scaling analysis
T=50 years
T=100 years
2
T=2 years
10 T=5 years
Intensity [mm/h]

T=10 years
Empty markers:
T=20 years Sample quantiles
T=50 years estimates
T=100 years

1
10

0
10
-2 -1 0 1
10 10 10 10
Duration [h]

Fig. 8. Comparison of IDF curves established by the method of simple scaling (solid line) and sample quantiles estimates (dashed line) for return periods of 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and
100 years for Tunis Manoubia.

Table 2 Table 3
Slopes of the linear regression relationship between d and X and the corresponding Fitted regression parameters using P90% and their coefficient of determination R2.
confidence intervals.
Time scale
Rainfall Regression [5 min30 min] (R2) [30 min24 h] (R2)
[5 min30 min] [30 min24 h]
statistics parameters
x b R2 x b R2
Pmean log-log slope 1.23 (0.96) 1.40 (0.83)
Confidence interval [1.42 1.04] [1.90 0.89] 1.00 0.15 0.96 6.41 0.52 0.93
Pmedian log-log slope 1.25 (0.95) 0.97 (0.55)
Confidence interval [1.48 1.01] [1.66 0.27]
P90% log-log slope 1.15 (0.96) 1.52 (0.93) In Fig. 10 station by station, the matching between scaling
Confidence interval [1.35 0.96] [1.84 1.20] quantiles and sample quantiles obtained from DGRE-ST2i (2007)
study is examined, gathering all the study durations. According
to these Q-Qplots, the good suitability of the model to the samples
Douanes, Mellgue K13, Sarrat Pont Route, Sraya Ecole. The station may be outlined. Using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of adequacy,
Ain Beya, it has been removed despite its 17 years of data length the null hypothesis (the homogeneity of the quantiles provided by
because it has a particular behavior (k1 > k2, high P90% compared both approaches), was accepted for the 10 stations at significance
to other stations). This singularity might be explained by its high level a = 0.05.
elevation comparatively to the other stations. It remains 10 sta- In order to explore the limits of the Eq. (19) model, the cross-
tions namely the stations numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15 validation was performed by applying a leave-one-out validation
(see Table 1). method. The reduction of error R.E. (Lorenz, 1956), knowing that
Table 2 summarizes the slopes of the linear regression between RE = 1 indicates perfect estimation, the Mean squared error of val-
d = y/X and X as well as the corresponding confidence intervals at idation (MSE) and the Root mean squared error of validation (MSE)
the confidence level 5%. As it can be seen from Table 2, the three are performed. The results are good since RE = 0.93 (0.90),
selected proxy variables give rise to good results with R2 > 0.85. MSE = 0.005 (0.013) and RMSE = 0.073 (0.114) for k1 (k2).
However, the explanatory variable P90% presents the best results
namely R2 = 0.99 for the interval [5 min30 min] and R2 = 0.98 for 4.2. Risk analysis for Tunis area
the interval [30 min24 h]. Table 3 reports the estimated parame-
ters x and b of Eq. (18). To analyze the risk in Tunis areas, only stations having a num-
The fitted regionalization models are reported in (Eq. (19)). ber of years of observation P20 years are used in this study. Only
8 25 among 41 stations satisfying this criterion have been remained.
< k1  P1:00
0:15
The parameters l24 and r24 are estimated from the annual maxi-
90%
19
: k2  6:41 mum daily rainfall observed on the 25 stations of Tunis area using
P 0:5290%
the probability weighted moment estimator (PWM). Eq. (14) then
Fig. 9 present the 10 ratios of the estimated parameters k1 and provides the IDF curves for the smaller durations 5 min 6 d < 24 h.
k2 to the proxy variable P90% are reported versus the proxy variable Then, l24, r24 as well as I(T, d) are interpolated using kriging inter-
as well as the resulting simple linear regression model. The match- polation (via ArcView software). Durations d of 5 min, 30 min and
ing is quite good (see Table 3). 3 h as well as return periods of T equal to 5 and 50 years are
46 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849

-1
10

Sarrat Pont Route

Mellgue K13

Tunis Manoubia
Ghardimaou

Zouarine Gare
Bir Mchergua

Joumine Antra

Sraya Ecole
Ain Taga
Hadra
k/P90%

-2
10

k
1

k
2

Regression k
1

Regression k
2

-3
10 2
10
P90% (mm)

Fig. 9. Ratio of scale exponents to P90% versus k/P90%.

4 4 4
10 10 10
QQPlot Haidra Station QQPlot Zouarine Gare Station QQPlot Sarrat Station

2 2 2
10 10 10

0 0 0
10 0 1 2
10 10 0 1 2
0 1 2
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Empirical quantiles

4
4
10
4
10 10
quantile simple scaling QQPlot Ain Taga Station
QQPlot Joumine Station QQPlot Ghardimaou Station

2 2 2
10 10 10

0 0 0
10 10 10 0 1 2
0 1 2 0 1 2
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
4 4 4
10 quantile simple scaling 10 10
QQPlot K13 Station QQPlot Bir Mchergua Station QQPlot Sraya Station

2 2 2
10 10 10

0 0 0
10 10 10 0 1 2
0 1 2 0 1 2
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

4
10
QQPlot Tunis Manoubia Station

2
10 2 5 10 20 50 100 bisectrix

0
10 0 1 2
10 10 10
Simple scaling quantiles

Fig. 10. QQ-plots of rainfall quantiles for 10 stations on the northern of Tunisia.

considered. Examples of maps of quantiles are plotted in Fig. 11. rainfall compared to inland areas (Fig. 3), highest intensities for
They represent the 5 years return period and the estimated 5 min 5 min are localized farer from the coast (Fig. 11a). However the
and 3 h intensities. East- West gradient is both found in P90% as well as I(5 min,
While the coastal part of Tunis area is characterized by the 5 years) and I(3 h, 5 years) maps (Fig. 11b). Indeed, it is suggested
highest values of the 0.9 percentiles of maximum annual daily that the Mediterranean Sea as well as the Lake of Tunis play a role
 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849 47

Fig. 11a. Kriged maps of rainfall quantile [mm/24 h] for {d = 5 min, T = 5 years}.

Fig. 11b. Kriged maps of rainfall quantile [mm/24 h] for {d = 3 h, t = 5 years}.

48 H. Ghanmi et al. / Journal of Hydrology 541 (2016) 3849

100
90
80
70

% Area>S
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 50 100 150 200 250
S [mm/day]
5mn 50 years 30mn 50 years 3h 50 years

Fig. 12. Variation in intensities of rainfall according to the % of the surface for to the reference durations 5 min, 30 min and 3 h for the return period of 50 years.

Table 4
Percent of areas affected by rainfall intensities exceeding a fixed threshold S for durations 5 min, 30 min and 3 h and return period T = 50 years.

Duration d = 5 min, return period T = 50 years

Threshold S [mm/h] 157 167 171 174 200
[%] of Tunis area 95 50 20 10 0.5
Duration d = 30 min, return period T = 50 years
Threshold S [mm/h] 56 59 62 63 77
[%] of Tunis area 95 50 20 10 0.5
Duration d = 3 h, return period T = 50 years
Threshold S [mm/h] 13 15 16 17 23
[%] of Tunis area 95 50 20 10 0.5

in the genesis of convective events but we havent any studies on
this phenomenon.
From the mapping achieved for each duration and each return
period with a mesh side equal to 334.3 m (mesh area  0.1 km2),
the percentage of surface below a given rainfall intensity S (mm/
h) was estimated by computing the number of pixels with rainfall
below S. The area percentages (ordinate) receiving a rain exceeding
a threshold S (abscissa) are plotted in Fig. 12 for three reference
times equal to 5 min and 3 h for a return period of 50 years. These
reference times are often adopted for urban hydrology design.
From Fig. 12, on average once every 50 years, for a period of
5 min, 50% of the total on Tunis area is watered by a rain of
168 mm/day. For duration of 3 h, 50% of the surface is covered by
an intensity of 15 mm/day of rainfall. Thus, from Fig. 12, if the
duration and the given surface are fixed, one can deduce the inten-
sity of rain reached or exceeded on the surface for different return
periods, which gives rise to IDAF curves. Table 4 summarizes the
intensities and area associated to the risk T = 50 years:
From Table 4 displaying frequency area intensity in Tunis area,
for the return period 50 years, it comes that on the time scale of 3 h
20% of the area is covered by an average intensity above 23 mm/h
and 10% by rainfall intensity greater than 25 mm / h. However on
the time scale of 5 min, 5% of the territory is covered by a rainfall
intensity greater than 180 mm/h for T = 50 years.
5. Conclusions
The hypothesis of simple scaling combined with the hypothesis
of Gumbel model is tested using the annual maximum intensities
observed in 15 tipping bucket raingauge in northern Tunisia for
durations between 5 min and 24 h. As a result, two rainfall ranges
were distinguished namely [5 min30 min] and [30 min1 day] for
all stations. Quantiles estimated using scale invariance approach
favorably compared to sample percentiles estimation. The applica-
tion of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, assuming as null hypothesis
H0 the homogeneity of both quantiles distributions, results in
retaining the null hypothesis for all stations at significance level
a = 0.05.
An attempt for regionalization of resulting scaling exponents
delineated for both ranges was completed. Several investigations
using proxy variables represented by statistics of annual maximum
daily precipitation (median, average and 90th percentile of max-
ima) were achieved. Finally, a regression formula of regionalization
of scaling exponents based on the 90th percentile of the daily max-
imum annual rainfall was selected. Finally, the proposed method-
ology allowed plotting and IDAF curves.
The limit of the approach is the assumption that the extreme
values of rainfall are distributed according to the Gumbel distribu-
tion. The assumption of Gumbel is not necessarily optimal because
multifractal properties of rainfall field are consistent with the
hypothesis of hyperbolic decay of tail distribution, which is not
the case for Gumbel hypothesis. However, for the operational point
of view, the resulting IDF maps and IDAF curves are very helpful for
inundation risk analysis.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the General Directorate of
Water Resources (DGRE, Tunisia). This project is financed by the
Tunisian-French scientific cooperation project CMCU: Estimation
and mapping of extreme rainy events of Tunis area. (Code
10G1102).
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