Spatiotemporal Extreme Value Modeling with Environmental Applications

Extreme value analysis (EVA) is essential to evaluate the extreme events brought on by natural hazards in the environment. Particularly, EVA informs risk assessment for communities, which is crucial to protecting people and property. This work focuses on an application to extreme rainfall in the Houston, TX region and Harris County, and performs spatiotemporal extreme value modeling in order to assess the evolution of extremes over time for the region. Rainfall extreme values are compared to previous standards in order to demonstrate the need for updated policies. In addition to the temporal evolution of EVA, a key component of this work is the introduction of new methods to extend extreme value modeling at the point observation level to the areal level. The methods employ spatial statistics change-of-support concepts and the use of the extended Hausdorff distance to provide estimates of the extreme value distribution at the region level. Regional inference provides insight to support policy decisions for communities and cities