Assessment of Peak Flood Entering Hirakud Reservoir on River Mahanadi of Odisha, India

Estimating the Peak Flood Discharge for a desired return time is necessary for the planning, design, and management of hydraulic infrastructure like barrages, dams, spillways, and bridges. This paper presents the results of a study that examined the frequency of floods entering Hirakud reservoir on river Mahanadi of Odisha state, India using the Gumbel’s distribution and Log Pearson type III techniques, two frequently used models in hydrological studies for the probability distribution to mimic stream flows. The method has been used to forecast yearly maximum discharge data of Mahanadi river for a time interval of thirty years (1988-2017). The research also demonstrates a positive connection between the observed and expected peak discharges for the Log normal, Log Pearson type III (LP3) and Gumbel’s (EV1) models (R2 = 0.989), (R2 = 0.989), and R2 = 0.998 respectively. Peak flood values for periods 2, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200 and 400year return periods were also determined using the same approach, which will help for flood management through the reservoir.