H44D-06:
Rapid setup of the high resolution interactive hydrological / hydraulic model for flood forecasting at global scale

Thursday, 18 December 2014: 5:15 PM
Gennadii Donchyts1,2, Arjen Haag3,4, Hessel Winsemius3, Fedor Baart3,5, Rolf Hut1, Niels Drost6 and Nick Van De Giesen7, (1)Delft University of Technology, Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft, Netherlands, (2)Deltares, Delft, 2629, Netherlands, (3)Deltares, Delft, Netherlands, (4)Utrecht University, Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht, Netherlands, (5)Delft University of Technology, Department of Coastal Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft, Netherlands, (6)Netherlands eScience Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands, (7)Delft University of Technology, Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft, 5612, Netherlands
Abstract:
Rapid predictions of flood using high resolution process-based numerical models applied at global scale is a useful tool for flood forecasting. Usually it requires days or even months to create such a model for a specific area and in most cases the process assumes a lot of manual work. Our goal is to significantly decrease the time required for this process by means of software integration of data processing tools, numerical models and global data sets. The methodology is based on the use of the global hydrological model PCR-GLOBWB to identify the potential flood areas. An automated set of tools will be applied to generate a coupled hydrological / hydraulic model using a high resolution input data based on free global data sets such as SRTM, HydroSHEDS, CORINE, and OpenStreetMaps. This information should be sufficient to generate high resolution input for distributed rainfall-runoff and shallow water flow models. For the detection of potential flood areas, and generation of the unstructured model grid required by the D-Flow FM hydrodynamic model, we will use Height Above the Nearest Drainage (HAND) dataset derived from SRTM. For coupling the distributed hydrological and shallow water models we will use the Basic Model Interface (BMI). BMI is a lightweight API that enables communication with numerical models at runtime. We will validate benefits of the algorithm by applying it to the San Francisco bay area. The models and data processing tools will be integrated into an interactive user interface that will enable data exploration and will allow generation of new models based on user request or automatic rules. Using our approach we expect to make significant steps towards realizing our goal of global availability of flood forecasting models.


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