Meta-Analysis on the Empirical Models Application for Flood Estimation in Iran

Flooding due to the particular climate and topography conditions and inappropriate spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall is a major threat to the human, capital and national resources in Iran. Estimation of floods peak discharges in a catchment is one of the most important issues for the hydrologist and water experts. Regional analysis is an effective method for estimating flood discharge in areas with no long period of recorded data. The aim of this study was to assess the empirical models applications to estimate floods based on the narrative and meta-analytic methods. Thus, the main variables were identified using a narrative review of some researches which have been carried out using empirical models. Hence, from 40 case studies which their results have been published only 14 studies because of the availability of their full texts were selected to provide meta-analysis table. The results showed that among various parameters used in empirical flood peak discharges estimation models, the catchment area is the most effective parameters.