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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">1812-2116</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2025-3228</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Regionalization of IDF Curves for Mainland China: A Comparative Evaluation of Machine Learning versus Spatial Interpolation Techniques</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jiang</surname>
<given-names>Yuantian</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Wenting</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Fullhart</surname>
<given-names>Andrew T.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yu</surname>
<given-names>Bofu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Bo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Geographic Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai 519087, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Australian Rivers Institute, School of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD 4111, Australia</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of  Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>23</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2025</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>34</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Yuantian Jiang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3228/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3228/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3228/egusphere-2025-3228.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3228/egusphere-2025-3228.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Regionalization of Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves is essential for designing stormwater drainage systems, especially in regions without rainfall data of high temporal resolution. However, most studies have not thoroughly compared regionalization methods using sub-daily site observations versus gridded daily precipitation products. The potential of machine learning (ML) methods driven by daily gridded precipitation remains largely underexplored. This study addresses these gaps by regionalizing the IDF curves across mainland China for durations ranging between 1 and 72 hours and return periods ranging from 2 to 1,000 years. Five interpolation methods based on hourly observations from 2363 stations and five machine learning methods based on a gridded daily dataset were tested for accuracy. Both ML and traditional interpolation methods showed robust performances based on the Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE) performance measure. The most successful interpolation method was Kriging with External Drift using mean annual precipitation, with KGE &amp;gt; 0.96 for 1-hr-5-yr and 24-hr-5-yr storms and KGE &amp;gt; 0.84 for 1-hr-100-yr and 24-hr-100-yr storms, while Gradient Boosting was the best-performing ML model, with KGE &amp;gt; 0.94 for 1-hr-5-yr and 24-hr-5-yr storms and KGE &amp;gt; 0.87 for 1-hr-100-yr and 24-hr-100-yr storms. Notably, despite ML using daily data and interpolation using hourly data, the accuracy of ML gradually improved, eventually approaching or even surpassing the interpolation methods as duration and return period increased. Consequently, a regionalized dataset on IDF curves for mainland China with a spatial resolution of 0.1 degrees (and optionally 0.5 degrees) was generated using the optimal regionalization method.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="34"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42307424</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology</funding-source>
<award-id>2023-KF-10</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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