21st Century Dam Safety Rules for Extreme Precipitation in a Changing Climate

The Colorado and New Mexico dam safety programs recently completed the Colorado-New Mexico Regional Extreme Precipitation Study (REPS). The scope of work for the REPS project was designed to accomplish three project goals:
- create updated tools that are broadly accepted as representing the state-of-the-practice in estimating the magnitude of Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) and calculating its equivalent annual exceedance probability (AEP) from separate precipitation-frequency estimates (PFEs),
- use results of the study to develop a recommendation for a draft standard of practice for use as a model nationally, and
- identify areas for future research toward improving estimates of extreme precipitation.

To achieve the above goals, the scope of work included three work tasks:
- Task 1: Estimation of Deterministic Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP)
- Task 2: Preparation of Probabilistic Precipitation-Frequency Estimates (PFEs)
- Task 3: Applications of Physically Based Dynamical Weather Modeling for PMP and Precipitation Frequency analyses