The unit peak discharge as a tool for flood magnitude comparison and analysis

Abstract

To analyze the river floods dynamics, it is common to fix the observations of the flow at a characteristic checkpoint of the basin, showing its evolution over time: the hydrograph. A less common way of studying this hydrological phenomenon is the analysis of the unit peak discharge of the flood (i.e., the peak flow divided by the contributory area of the basin) along different checkpoints of the drainage axis