Discover the Editor's Choice: From each issue of the leading journal Water Science & Technology a member of the Editorial Board selects one outstanding paper to share across IWA Publishing platforms.
IWA Publishing is pleased to announce that the 53rd Editor's Choice Paper, chosen by the Editor-in-Chief, Wolfgang Rauch, is:
Xingpo Liu, Chengfei Xia, Yifan Tang, Jiayang Tu, Huimin Wang
https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2021.032
Why was this paper chosen?
Engineering design and operation of urban hydrology structures relies on an accurate assessment of the relation between intensity, duration and frequency of extreme rainfall – commonly expressed as IDF curves. The estimation of these curves or their parameters, respectively, has a long tradition and applies statistical procedures such as maximum likelihood estimation or the method of moments based on long term rainfall data. In this paper the authors apply a Bayesian method together with an adaptive Metropolis-Hastings algorithm both for the estimation of parameters and their uncertainty. The authors can demonstrate the benefit of the approach for a case study in China. For engineers, scholars and scientists not concerned with urban hydrology the problem might appear marginal and the method presented as complex. However, it is clear that IDF curves serve as the backbone of a major part of urban water infrastructure and the accurate estimation of thereof is important. I thus recommend this paper as a clear and convincing demonstration of a refined procedure for IDF curve estimation.
Wolfgang Rauch, Editor-in-Chief.