ORIGINAL PAPER Quantifying uncertainties associated with depth duration frequency curves Majid Mirzaei • Yuk Feng Huang • Teang Shui Lee • Ahmed El-Shafie • Abdul Halim Ghazali Received: 10 April 2013 / Accepted: 28 July 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Uncertainty in depth–duration–frequency (DDF) curves is usually disregarded in the view of difficulties associated in assigning a value to it. In central Iran, precipitation duration is often long and characterized with low intensity leading to a considerable uncertainty in the parameters of the probabilistic distributions describing rainfall depth. In this paper, the daily rainfall depths from 4 stations in the Zayanderood basin, Iran, were analysed, and a generalized extreme value distribution was fitted to the maximum yearly rainfall for durations of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 days. DDF curves were described as a function of rainfall duration (D) and return period (T). Uncertainties of the rainfall depth in the DDF curves were estimated with the bootstrap sampling method and were described by a normal probability density function. Standard deviations were modeled as a function of rainfall duration and rainfall depth using 10 4 bootstrap samples for all the durations and return periods considered for each rainfall station. Keywords Uncertainty analysis  Depth duration frequency curves  Generalized extreme value distribution  Bootstrap sampling M. Mirzaei (&)  A. El-Shafie Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: mirzaeii@gmail.com Y. F. Huang Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universiti Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia T. S. Lee  A. H. Ghazali Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 123 Nat Hazards DOI 10.1007/s11069-013-0819-3