Comparison of Parameter Estimation Methods in A Kappa Distribution

This paper deals with the comparison of parameter estimation methods in a 3-parameter Kappa distribution which is sometimes used in flood frequency analysis. The method of moment estimation(MME), L-moment estimation(L-ME), and maximum likelihood estimation(MLE) are applied to estimate three parameters. The performance of these methods are compared by Monte-carlo simulations. Especially for computing MME and L-ME, ike dimensional nonlinear equations are simplied to one dimensional equation which is calculated by the Newton-Raphson iteration under constraint. Based on the criterion of the mean squared error, the L-ME is recommended to use for small sample size $(n\leq100)$ while MLE is good for large sample size.