Reconstruction of flood probabilities in France, 1705-2015

As part of the HEGS project, an attempt was made at reconstructing flood probabilities for 207 stations in France during the period 1705-2015. This reconstruction is based on the historical flood marks database Repères De Crues. Details can be found in this publication.

This repository contains the data underlying this reconstruction (historical flood marks at sites and flood peaks at hydrometric stations), and the reconstruction itself. A sonified animation of these data is available at https://vimeo.com/815008124.

data/sites.txt

Description of 327 flood mark sites, with the following columns:

"index": site index.

"ID": site ID.

"lon": longitude.

"lat": latitude.

"town": town (in French: commune).

"INSEEcode": INSEE code, an ID for the town.

"river": name of the river whose floods created the marks.

"zone": geographical area.

"description": site description (in French).

"firstMark": year of the first available flood mark.

"lastMark": year of the last available flood mark.

"nMark": number of available flood marks during the period 1705-2015.

data/marksAtSites.txt

Flood marks recorded at sites during the period 1705-2015, with the following columns:

"ID": site ID.

"year": year of the mark.

"month": month of the mark.

"day": day of the mark.

"hydroYear": hydrological year of the mark (hydroYear e.g. 1998 goes from September 1998 to August 1999).

"isFloodPeak": does the mark correspond to the flood peak?

"elevation": elevation of the mark (in m).

data/stations.txt

Description of 207 hydrometric stations, with the following columns:

"index": station index.

"ID": station ID.

"lon": longitude.

"lat": latitude.

"area": area of the catchment monitored by the station.

"description": station description (in French).

"nMonth": number of months with available data.

data/peaksAtStations.txt

Flood peaks recorded at stations, with the following columns:

"ID": site ID.

"hydroYear": hydrological year.

"amax": annual maximum value of daily discharge (in m3.s-1).

"mm": same as above but converted in mm.

reconstructions.txt

Reconstructed distribution of annual maxima, estimated at all stations and for the period 1705-2015, with the following columns:

"year": hydrological year.

"stationID": ID of the station.

"lon": longitude.

"lat": latitude.

"median": median of the estimated GEV distribution for this year and this station (in mm).

"low": 0.05-quantile of the estimated GEV distribution for this year and this station (in mm).

"high": 0.95-quantile of the estimated GEV distribution for this year and this station (in mm).

"prob": Estimated probability of exceeding a 10-year event for this year and this station.