S. Farhadi, M. Galoie, A. Motamedi,
Volume 26, Issue 1 (5-2022)
One of the important relationships which are used in the estimation of river discharges and floods is Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF). The accuracy of this relation is dependent on the accuracy of its parameters which need to be found based on short-duration rainfall depths (such as 15, 30, 60 minutes, and so on) for a long term (i. e. 30 consecutive years). Unfortunately, only 24-hour rainfall depths are available in many rainfall stations in Iran. Various empirical relations are available to convert 24-hour rainfall depth to sub-daily. One of these methods is IMD and its accuracy in some regions is low. In this research, the IMD method was transformed into a single-parameter equation and then, this parameter is evaluated for some rainfall stations in Iran. To do this, maximum 24, 12, 6, and 3-hour rainfall depths were extracted and their frequencies were calculated using Weibull and Gumbel methods. Regional coefficients in the modified IMD method were estimated using a linear regression method. Although the power of the IMD method is 0.33, results showed that this parameter for the rainfall stations ranged from 0.28 to 0.35. To make more comparison, the IDF relation of Kordan’s watershed was calculated using the short-duration rainfall depth which was estimated using the modified IMD, and then, this IDF was compared to observed data and Ghahraman’s relation which is commonly used in Iran. The comparison showed that the modified IMD relation could estimate the short-duration rainfall data better than Ghahraman’s relation. After calibration of the modified IMD relation for various regions in Iran, the sub-daily rainfall depth can be obtained with high accuracy.