Abstract:As urbanization process continues to advance, the small catchment areas of slope land are gradually incorporated into urban construction range. The design flood of rainstorm is a crucial basis for the construction and operational management of town flood control projects. Taking a small catchment area of the slope land in a city in Zhejiang as a study object, the basic principles of the rational formula method, the outdoor drainage formula method and the empirical formula method are set forth. The Sobol method is used to analyze the sensitivity of watershed,rainstorm and runoff parameters. The principles, differences, applicable conditions, and error sources of various computational methods are studied. The design peak flow calculations are conducted for small catchment areas of urban slope land with different return periods. The results indicate that estimation errors of some rainstorm and runoff parameters are the main sources of calculation errors for design peak flow rates. Using the results obtained by the rational formula method as the design basis can meet the urban flood control safety requirements. For flood return periods of 2, 5, 10, 15, 25 and 50 years, the corresponding regional overall flood control design peak flow rates are 40.1, 45.0, 48.7, 50.6, 54.0 and 57.3 m3/s respectively. The research findings can provide the technical support for improving the comprehensive urban flood control system.