Author(s): Yasir Kaheil, Lorenzo Begnudelli, Jeff Mccollum, Zhao Liu
Linked Author(s): Yasir Kaheil
Keywords: Flood hazard, inundation, natural catastrophe, risk management
Abstract: We employed a physically-based hydrologic model to simulate river discharge, and a 2D hydrodynamic model to simulate inundation. The hydrologic Hillslope River Routing (HRR) model was used to account for runoff by mainly using the Green-Ampt infiltration model, calibrated against observed streamflow data from publicly-available and proprietary datasets. For inundation, a 2D finite-volume model with wetting/drying was implemented. The approach consisted of simulating flood along the river network by forcing the hydraulic model with the simulated hydrographs by HRR scaled up so that the peaks correspond to certain return levels, e. g. 100-year discharges. The model was implemented in a parallel computing environment, and was distributed such that each available processor would take the next simulation. Given an approximate a-priori criterion, the simulations were ordered from most- to least-demanding, to ensure that all processors were terminated nearly simultaneously. Upon completion of all simulations, the maximum-depth envelope was applied to represent the final map. The model was applied globally, with maps shown at different return periods. These maps, which are currently available at 3 arc-sec (~90 m) resolution, can also be made available at higher resolutions by using higher resolution input elevation data
Year: 2017