The wave may contain the information necessary to describe the event that created it. If you know, perhaps by frequency, that the wave came from two super-massive black holes spinning around each other at a given rate, then you know how massive each hole should be. From that you can predict the energy of the wave. And from that you know how far away the event must be for the energy behind the wave to have spread so thin. It's basically the same process as calculating distance via cepheid variable stars.