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Lapsed/non-members = $35.00

WEBINAR SUMMARY:
For more than 75 years, high-hazard structures in the United States, including dams and nuclear power plants, have been engineered to withstand floods resulting from the most unlikely but possible precipitation, termed Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP). PMP procedures were developed in the early 20th century and have not changed significantly in 50 years. While incremental improvements to PMP procedures have been made, they do not address uncertainty or climate change. A National Academies report, released in June 2024, recommends a new definition of PMP and presents a vision for a methodology relevant for design, operation, and regulation of critical infrastructure. The committee recommends revising the definition of PMP to become: “the depth of precipitation for a particular duration, location, and areal extent, such as a drainage basin, with an extremely low annual probability of being exceeded, for a specified climate period.” The new definition does not require the assumption that rainfall is bounded nor that PMP procedures produce an appropriate estimate of such a bound and permits PMP estimates to change as the climate changes. The committee’s vision is: “Model-based probabilistic estimates of extremely low exceedance probability precipitation depths under current and future climates will be attainable at space and time scales relevant for design and safety analysis of critical infrastructure within the next decade.” Central to this vision is the new definition for PMP. Recommended steps to achieve this vision are outlined.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1. Introduce recommendations of the National Academies committee for modernizing Probable Maximum Precipitation estimation.
2. Discuss the scientific rationale for recommended procedures.
3. Discuss challenges of implementing recommended procedures.

SPEAKER:

Jim Smith
Professor Emeritus
Princeton University

Jim Smith is William and Edna Macaleer Professor Emeritus and Senior Scientist in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. He received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Georgia in 1974 and PhD in Environmental Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University in 1980. Smith’s research interests center on the hydrometeorology of extreme rainfall and flooding.

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