Assessment of first-order-moment-based sample reconstruction method for design flood estimation in changing environment

Estimating the design flood under nonstationary conditions is challenging. In this study, a sample reconstruction approach was developed to transform a nonstationary series into a stationary one in a future time window (FTW). In this approach, the first-order moment (EFTW) of an extreme flood series in the FTW was used, and two possible methods of estimating EFTW values in terms of point values and confidence intervals were developed. Three schemes were proposed to analyze the uncertainty of design flood estimation in terms of sample representativeness, uncertainty from EFTW estimation, and both factors, respectively. To investigate the performance of the sample reconstruction approach, synthesis experiments were designed based on the annual peak series of the Little Sugar Creek in the United States. The results showed that the sample reconstruction approach performed well when the high-order moment of the series did not change significantly in the specified FTW. Otherwise, its performance deteriorated. In addition, the uncertainty of design flood estimation caused by sample representativeness was greater than that caused by EFTW estimation.

Quasi-periodic events on structured earthquake models

There has been much interest in studying quasi-periodic events on earthquake models.Here we investigate quasiperiodic events in the avalanche time series on structured earthquake models by the analysis of the autocorrelation function and the fast Fourier transform.For random spatial earthquake models, quasi-periodic events are robust and we obtain a simple rule for a period that is proportional to the choice of unit time and the dissipation of the system.Moreover, computer simulations validate this rule for two-dimensional lattice models and cycle graphs, but our simulation results also show that small-world models, scale-free models, and random rule graphs do not have periodic phenomena.Although the periodicity of avalanche does not depend on the criticality of the system or the average degree of the system or the size of the system,there is evidence that it depends on the time series of the average force of the system.

Self-Organized Criticality in an Anisotropic Earthquake Model

We have made an extensive numerical study of a modified model proposed by Olami,Feder,and Christensen to describe earthquake behavior.Two situations were considered in this paper.One situation is that the energy of the unstable site is redistributed to its nearest neighbors randomly not averagely and keeps itself to zero.The other situation is that the energy of the unstable site is redistributed to its nearest neighbors randomly and keeps some energy for itself instead of reset to zero.Different boundary conditions were considered as well.By analyzing the distribution of earthquake sizes,we found that self-organized criticality can be excited only in the conservative case or the approximate conservative case in the above situations.Some evidence indicated that the critical exponent of both above situations and the original OFC model tend to the same result in the conservative case.The only difference is that the avalanche size in the original model is bigger.This result may be closer to the real world,after all,every crust plate size is different.