A model of discontinuous measurement error and its effects on the probability distribution of flood discharge measurements

Above a given threshold an indirect method is usually used to estimate flood discharges. This results in a significant increase in the standard deviation of the measurement error, a phenomenon which the authors have termed discontinuous measurement error. An error model reveals that the coefficients of variation, skewness, and kurtosis of the distribution of the measured flood discharges are significantly higher than the corresponding coefficients of the parent flood distribution. This bias has important implications with regard to flood frequency analysis.