Combining Statistical and Expert Evidence within the D-S Framework: Application to Hydrological Return Level Estimation

Estimation of extreme sea levels and waves for high return periods is of prime importance in hydrological design and flood risk assessment. The common practice consists of inferring design levels from the available observations and assuming the distribution of extreme values to be stationary. However, in the recent decades, more concern has been given to the integration of the effect of climate change in environmental analysis. When estimating defense structure design parameters, sea level rise projections provided by experts now have to be combined with historical observations. Due to limited knowledge about the future world and the climate system, and also to the lack of sufficient sea records, uncertainty involved in extrapolating beyond available data and projecting in the future is considerable and should absolutely be accounted for in the estimation of design values.

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