Comparison of different methods describing the peak runoff contributing areas during floods

In the last few years, the scientific community has developed several hydrological models aimed at the simulation of hydrological processes acting at the basin scale. In this context, the portion of peak runoff contributing areas represents a critical variable for a correct estimate of surface runoff. Such areas are strongly influenced by the saturated portion of a river basin (influenced by antecedent conditions) but may also evolve during a specific rainfall event. In the recent years, we have developed 2 theoretically derived probability distributions that attempt to interpret these 2 processes adopting daily runoff and flood‐peak time series. The probability density functions (PDFs) obtained by these 2 schematisations were compared for humid river basins in southern Italy. Results highlighted that the PDFs of the peak runoff contributing areas can be interpreted by a gamma distribution and that the PDF of the relative saturated area provides a good interpretation of such process that can be used for flood prediction.