Application of a meteorological-hydrological modelling cascade at high spatial and temporal resolution for flash floods simulation in urban areas

P.I. Mejía-Estrada, P. Bates, J. Freer, G. Coxon, Nadav Peleg, Peter Molnar
2019
Identification and characterisation of extreme flooding have become increasingly crucial given the effects of climate change in the water cycle. When intense, localised rainfall occurs over a small, impervious area where hydraulic structures are unable to cope with water volumes greater than design values, urban flash flooding is likely to occur. The present study outlines a framework to produce robust estimates of urban inundation behavior as studied by Pappenberger, Beven et al. (2005) and
more » ... ríguez-Rincón, Pedrozo-Acuña et al. (2015), with the novelty that the model set-up, sources of uncertainty, physical assumptions, stochasticity of processes and parameterisations are assessed in a high spatial and temporal resolution framework at local scale. The proposed off-line cascade modelling simulates precipitation patterns, rainfall-runoff components and inundation depths and extents in an urban environment in a probabilistic scheme that allows uncertainty propagation. The methodology is currently being tested in the port city of Newcastle, a prominent north-east urban area of the United Kingdom which at the end of June in 2012 was severely flooded after a prolonged dry spell followed 100-year return period storm, resulting also in the loss of power supplies and significant damage and disruption to the road network.
doi:10.3929/ethz-b-000347547 fatcat:55my22uirvbypnudd23s6im64u