Region-of-influence approach to a frequency analysis of heavy precipitation in Slovakia

The paper compares different approaches to re- gional frequency analysis with the main focus on the im- plementation of the region-of-influence (ROI) technique for the modelling of probabilities of heavy precipitation amounts in the area of the Western Carpathians. Unlike the conven- tional regional frequency analysis where the at-site design values are estimated within a fixed pooling group (region), the ROI approach as a specific alternative to focused pooling techniques makes use of flexible pooling groups, i.e. each target site has its own group of sufficiently similar sites. In this paper, various ROI pooling schemes are constructed as combinations of different alternatives of sites' similarity (pooling groups defined according to climatological charac- teristics and geographical proximity of sites, respectively) and pooled weighting factors. The performance of the ROI pooling schemes and statistical models of conventional (re- gional and at-site) frequency analysis is assessed by means of Monte Carlo simulation studies for precipitation annual maxima for the 1-day and 5-day durations in Slovakia. It is demonstrated that a) all the frequency models based on the ROI method yield estimates of growth curves that are supe- rior to the standard regional and at-site estimates at most in- dividual sites, and b) the selection of a suitable ROI pooling scheme should be adjusted to the dominant character of the formation of heavy precipitation.