Search results for "Flood"
showing 10 items of 256 documents
On the influence of using binary and distributed information for 2D hydraulic model calibration and uncertainty evaluation
2013
Floods are considered the most frequent natural disaster world-wide and may have serious socio economic impacts in a community. In order to accomplish flood risk mitigation, flood risk analysis and assessment are required to provide information on current or future flood hazard and risks. Hazard and risk maps involve different data, expertise and effort, depending also on the end-users. More or less advanced deterministic approaches can be used, but intuitively probabilistic approaches seem to be more correct and suited for modelling flood inundation given typical uncertainties. Two very important matters remain open for research: the calibration of hydraulic models (oriented towards the es…
Pluvial flooding in urban areas: the role of surface drainage efficiency
2018
Pluvial flooding in urban areas may derive from the limited or temporarily reduced efficiency of surface drainage, even when the underlying storm sewers are properly designed. This study focuses on the impact of uncertainties in the operational condition of the surface drainage system on pluvial flood hazard. The flood propagation model FLURB-2D is implemented on a selected study area in the town of Genoa (Italy). Synthetic hyetographs based on the Chicago and bivariate copula methods with suitable return periods are used as input. While simulating the design rainfall, inlet operational conditions are varied stochastically using a Monte Carlo approach. Results confirm that microtopography h…
Multilevel model for flood wave propagation in flood-affected areas
1998
A hyperbolic model for the simulation of flood wave propagation on initially dry land is presented. The convective inertia terms are neglected in the momentum equations. This assumption allows the use of a finite element scheme with linear shape functions for the free surface elevations and constant unit discharges inside each element. An appropriate use of the explicit and implicit approximation of the spatial derivatives is able to avoid the introduction of internal boundaries in the case of vertical discontinuities of the terrain elevation. This is obtained without losing the desirable features of the system matrix or limiting the maximum Courant number. The efficiency and the reliabilit…
Flash floods in Mediterranean ephemeral streams in Valencia Region (Spain)
2016
Summary Ephemeral streams are typical Mediterranean fluvial systems with high risk of flash flooding, and few data are available about these systems in most locales. However, the SAIH network (Automatic Hydrological Information Systems) of the Jucar River Water Authority has been providing detailed information about ephemeral streams in Spain every 5 min since 1988. Using these data, we evaluated the processes of rainfall–runoff conversion and flood generation in five Mediterranean ephemeral streams ranging in size from 25 to 450 km 2 . To provide a general framework for hydrological analysis, the study included 142 flash flood events registered between 1989 and 2007. A more detailed analys…
The formation of alluvial fans and young floodplain deposits in the Lieser catchment, Eifel Mountains, western German Uplands: A study of soil erosio…
2011
This study deals with the exploration and spatiotemporal quantification of the young Holocene, nearly skeleton-free floodplain sediments of the Lieser River, a tributary of the Mosel River in the Eifel Mts. The deposits are primarily a consequence of anthropogenic-triggered soil erosion in the catchment. To observe the phenomenon of corresponding soil erosion on multiple levels two small alluvial fans of tributary catchments were investigated. For comparison, one location in the neighboring Salm valley was described. The results were compared with those of other streams. With extensive fieldwork more than 100 drillings and pits were made at 12 locations. For dating the sediments OSL dating…
Budgeting soil erosion from floodplain sediments of the central Rhenish Slate Mountains (Westerwald), Germany
2011
The distribution, thickness and composition of the floodplain sediments in the valleys of the Gelbach (Lower Westerwald) and Große Nister (Upper Westerwald) depend on the occurrence of loessic periglacial cover beds in their catchments as well as on historical land use. The budget of floodplain sedimentation was derived from a study of the floodloams underlying the monastery garden of Marienstatt, a village in the Große Nister valley. From the study of two occupation levels, pottery shards and radiocarbon dating, 55% of the floodloam can be attributed to the Modern period (younger than c. AD 1450). From the radiocarbon age of a charcoal fragment extracted from the base of the floodloam at …
Short-term emissions of CO 2 and N 2 O in response to periodic flood irrigation with waste water in the Mezquital Valley of Mexico
2015
Irrigation with waste water adds labile carbon and nitrogen compounds to the soil, and when applied by flooding it rapidly changes the soil's atmosphere and redox potential. In the Mezquital Valley more than 90 000 ha is irrigated with waste water from Mexico City, and enhanced emissions of CO2 and N2O follow each flooding. We measured the emissions of these two gases from a field irrigated periodically with waste water and under three crops, namely alfalfa, rye-grass and maize, using static chambers for 21 months. We also measured emissions from a field growing rain-fed maize before and shortly after two rain events. The data from repeated measurements from the same chambers are correlated…
The weight of the flood‐of‐record in flood frequency analysis
2018
2019
Flooding may damage important transportation infrastructures, such as roads, railways and bridges, which need to be well planned and designed to be able to withstand current and possible future climate-driven increases in flood frequencies and magnitudes. This study develops a novel approach to predictive statistical modelling of the probability of flooding at major road-stream intersection sites, where water, sediment and debris can accumulate and cause failure of drainage facilities and associated road damages. Two areas in south-west Sweden, affected by severe floods in August 2014, are used in representative case studies for this development. A set of physical catchment-descriptors (PCD…