On the prediction of extreme flood quantiles at ungauged locations with spatial copula

•The spatial copula approach to prediction of flood quantiles at ungauged location.•Bias and suboptimal prediction are corrected by the spatial copula.•A comparative study is carried on stations in Quebec, Canada.

SummaryThe present study investigates the use of the spatial copula approach for predicting flood quantiles at ungauged basins. Spatial copulas are the formalization of traditional geostatistics by copulas. In regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA), the regression of flood quantiles is often carried out at the logarithmic scale. Consequently, traditional interpolation methods introduce a bias and provide suboptimal predictions. In this study, the copula framework is examined for offering proper corrections in this framework. Moreover, copula techniques separate the regional distribution of flood quantiles from spatial dependence. This provides a full probabilistic model that represents a more flexible framework where proper combinations of regional distribution and dependence can be adapted to various situations that are encountered in RFFA. The adequacy of the investigated methodology is evaluated on a real world case study involving hydrometric stations from southern Quebec, Canada. Results show that the spatial copula framework is able to deal with the problem of bias, is robust to the presence of problematic stations and may improve the quality of quantile predictions while reducing the level of complexity of the models used in RFFA.