Multi-scale Dynamics of Statistical Scaling in Floods in
River Networks: The Challenge of Diagnostics

Vijay K. Gupta
CEAE and CIRES
University of Colorado

September 30, 2009

Abstract
Key developments during the 1960s building on research in the previous half a century led to two disparate engineering approaches to hydrologic prediction of floods, one statistical and the other deterministic. It was also recognized at the time that the two approaches must be closely connected because physical RF-RO mechanisms generating floods were the basis for the flood values used in the statistical analysis. Concrete progress has been made since late 1980s towards connecting spatial flood statistics with geophysical processes generating floods. A new scientific framework based in the concepts from nonlinear geophysics for unification across multiple space-time scales is emerging. Twenty years of progress and the attendant research challenge of diagnostics will be briefly explained through examples using data and theory.