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Future Challenges in Flood Defence Design and Management

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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2019) | Viewed by 26944

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Giuseppe T. Aronica

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Guest Editor

Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Contrada Di Dio, 98158 Sant'Agata, Messina, Italy
Interests: flood risk management and flood defence design; flood propagation modelling; flash floods and debris flows; flood vulnerability and damage evaluation; pluvial flooding; urban drainage systems; flood early warning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Albert S. Chen

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Guest Editor

Centre for Water Systems, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Interests: hydraulic modelling; flood damage and impact assessment; critical infrastructure; flash flooding; urban inundation; dual drainage; near real-time forecasting; flood risk management; climate change adaptations; resilience strategies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Eur Ing. Paul B Sayers

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Guest Editor

1. Sayers and Partners LLP, Watlington, UK
2. University of Oxford Honorary Fellow, Oxford, UK
Interests: strategic flood risk management; flood defence planning; design; management; nature-based approaches; flood social and economic vulnerability; coastal erosion; climate risk and resilience
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Flood is one of the major natural disasters that threatens many human lives and causes significant economic losses globally every year. The design and the performance analysis of a flood defence system are complex decision-making processes involving multiple criteria and uncertainties. This Special Issue of the Water is designed to cover all these themes by including papers presenting innovate results on the following topics:

Fluvial flooding defence infrastructures
Urban and pluvial flooding defence infrastructures
Probabilistic and risk-based design methods for flood defence infrastructures in urban and fluvial areas
Innovative approaches for reliability analysis
The impact of uncertainty on design and the management of flood defence infrastructures
Cost-effective and low-impact solutions for flood risk-reduction in urban and fluvial areas
Multifunctional flood defences
Adaptation planning and design of flood-defence infrastructures for future climate
The integration of the convention flood defences and nature-based approaches

Prof. Dr. Giuseppe T. Aronica
Dr. Albert S. Chen
Eur Ing. Paul B Sayers
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Infrastructural flood defences
Probabilistic design methods
Reliability analysis
Uncertainty
Risk-based design
Fluvial defences
Urban and pluvial flooding

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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28 pages, 4157 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Framework to Evaluate Urban Flood Resilience of Design Alternatives for Flood Defence Considering Future Adverse Scenarios

by Osvaldo M. Rezende, Francis M. Miranda, Assed N. Haddad and Marcelo G. Miguez

Water 2019, 11(7), 1485; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11071485 - 17 Jul 2019

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 6337

Abstract

In urbanized plains that are subject to flooding, the socioeconomic aspects, climate characteristics, built environment, and riverine processes exhibit bi-univocal relationships with the flood formation itself, creating a pattern of development without a predefined equilibrium state. The complexity of processes involved in flood management and the need for a comparative assessment method to hierarchise different design alternatives or planning scenarios requires practical and quantitative methods for urban diagnoses, including flood risk and resilience aspects. This paper proposes an alternative pathway to evaluate design alternatives for urban flood mitigation, assessing resilience in quantitative terms. In this way, a methodological framework is presented with which to evaluate flood resilience in urban watersheds planning, through the application of the Urban Flood Resilience Index (UFRI) and Future Scenarios Criteria (FSC). A case study illustrates the method using an urban watershed in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil. This study considered two possible design alternatives for flood control, with concentrated and distributed measures. The resilience mapping using the UFRI showed that the adoption of distributed measures could increase the areas classified as showing very high resilience by 41%, while very low resilience areas would be reduced by 87%. The FSC is able to present the integrated results of resilience variation from present and future conditions, considering, for example, climate change effects or unplanned urbanisation scenarios. The framework is able to perform comparisons between alternatives, showing the advantages associated with adopting distributed measures over the watershed, which reflected in a resilience value that was 24% higher when compared to the results obtained for the concentrated solutions scenario. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Challenges in Flood Defence Design and Management)

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19 pages, 4780 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Time-Integrated Index for Flood Risk to Resistance Capacity

by Osvaldo M. Rezende, Luciana F. Guimarães, Francis M. Miranda, Assed N. Haddad and Marcelo G. Miguez

Water 2019, 11(7), 1321; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11071321 - 26 Jun 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2780

Abstract

The lack of open spaces and the intense land use occupation in flood plains makes floods in consolidated urban areas difficult to mitigate. In these areas, setting a standard pre-defined return period for projects can limit and even preclude flood mitigation actions. However, it is possible to propose flood control alternatives that are compatible with available spaces. Thus, determining how much the original risk is reduced and how significant the residual risk can be becomes the main target. In this context, a time-integrated index for risk to resistance capacity is proposed to address these questions. This index correlates the exposure of buildings and urban infrastructure to the hazard of a given flood and is then evaluated over a project horizon through a sequence of events. The proposed index is applied to the Canal do Mangue catchment, a highly urbanized watershed located in Rio de Janeiro. The results demonstrate the difficulty of designing flood mitigation measures in extremely occupied watersheds and the importance of evaluating residual risks associated with proposed projects. As an additional result, a scenario with concentrated measures is compared to another with distributed interventions, evidencing the greater coverage of the latter. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Challenges in Flood Defence Design and Management)

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15 pages, 28884 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A New Flash Flood Warning Scheme Based on Hydrodynamic Modelling

by Wei Huang, Zhixian Cao, Minghai Huang, Wengang Duan, Yufang Ni and Wenjun Yang

Water 2019, 11(6), 1221; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11061221 - 11 Jun 2019

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3309

Abstract

Flash flooding is one of the most severe natural hazards and commonly occurs in mountainous and hilly areas. Due to the rapid onset of flash floods, early warnings are critical for disaster mitigation and adaptation. In this paper, a flash flood warning scheme is proposed based on hydrodynamic modelling and critical rainfall. Hydrodynamic modelling considers different rainfall and initial soil moisture conditions. The critical rainfall is calculated from the critical hazard, which is based on the flood flow depth and velocity. After the critical rainfall is calculated for each cell in the catchment, a critical rainfall database is built for flash flood warning. Finally, a case study is presented to show the operating procedure of the new flash flood warning scheme. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Challenges in Flood Defence Design and Management)

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18 pages, 11426 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Coping with Extreme Events: Effect of Different Reservoir Operation Strategies on Flood Inundation Maps

by Elena Ridolfi, Silvia Di Francesco, Claudia Pandolfo, Nicola Berni, Chiara Biscarini and Piergiorgio Manciola

Water 2019, 11(5), 982; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11050982 - 10 May 2019

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3775

Abstract

The need of addressing “residual flood risk” associated with structural protection measures, such as levee systems and flood-control reservoirs, has fostered actions aimed at increasing flood risk awareness. Structural measures have lowered risk perception by inducing a false sense of safety. As a result, these structures contribute to an underestimation of the “residual risk”. We analyze the effect of different reservoir operations, such as coping with drought versus coping with flood events, on flood inundation patterns. First, a hydrological model simulates different scenarios, which represent the dam regulation strategies. Each regulation strategy is the combination of an opening of the outlet gate and of the initial water level in the reservoir. Second, the corresponding outputs of the dam in terms of maximum discharge values are estimated. Then, in turn, each output of the dam is used as an upstream boundary condition of a hydraulic model used to simulate the flood propagation and the inundation processes in the river reach. The hydraulic model is thus used to determine the effect, in terms of inundated areas, of each dam regulation scenario. Finally, the ensemble of all flood inundation maps is built to define the areas more prone to be flooded. The test site is the Casanuova dam (Umbria, central Italy) which aims at: (i) mitigating floods occurring at the Chiascio River, one of the main tributaries of Tiber River, while (ii) providing water supply for irrigation. Because of these two competitive interests, the understanding of different scenarios generated by the dam operations offers an unique support to flood mitigation strategies. Results can lead to draw interesting remarks for a wide number of case studies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Challenges in Flood Defence Design and Management)

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11 pages, 2864 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Design Flood Estimation: Exploring the Potentials and Limitations of Two Alternative Approaches

by Kenechukwu Okoli, Korbinian Breinl, Maurizio Mazzoleni and Giuliano Di Baldassarre

Water 2019, 11(4), 729; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11040729 - 09 Apr 2019

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5771

Abstract

The design of flood defence structures requires the estimation of flood water levels corresponding to a given probability of exceedance, or return period. In river flood management, this estimation is often done by statistically analysing the frequency of flood discharge peaks. This typically requires three main steps. First, direct measurements of annual maximum water levels at a river cross-section are converted into annual maximum flows by using a rating curve. Second, a probability distribution function is fitted to these annual maximum flows to derive the design peak flow corresponding to a given return period. Third, the design peak flow is used as input to a hydraulic model to derive the corresponding design flood level. Each of these three steps is associated with significant uncertainty that affects the accuracy of estimated design flood levels. Here, we propose a simulation framework to compare this common approach (based on the frequency analysis of annual maximum flows) with an alternative approach based on the frequency analysis of annual maximum water levels. The rationale behind this study is that high water levels are directly measured, and they often come along with less uncertainty than river flows. While this alternative approach is common for storm surge and coastal flooding, the potential of this approach in the context of river flooding has not been sufficiently explored. Our framework is based on the generation of synthetic data to perform a numerical experiment and compare the accuracy and precision of estimated design flood levels based on either annual maximum river flows (common approach) or annual maximum water levels (alternative approach). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Challenges in Flood Defence Design and Management)

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17 pages, 8124 KiB

Open AccessCase Report

A Cost Efficiency Analysis of Flood Proofing Measures for Hydraulic Risk Mitigation in an Urbanized Riverine Area

by Ugo Ventimiglia, Angela Candela and Giuseppe Tito Aronica

Water 2020, 12(9), 2395; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w12092395 - 26 Aug 2020

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4174

Abstract

Non-structural measures for flood risk mitigation are often more economically accessible, easier to implement, and are highly effective, especially in view of the pursuit of risk resilience objectives. Among the non-structural measures, more importance is increasingly being attributed to flood proofing interventions. There are two main types of flood proofing: dry proofing and wet proofing. An example of dry proofing is shielding, which involves the use of flood barriers that can be installed in the entrances of buildings or outside the buildings in order to avoid contact with the houses and deviate the water flow. Their use must be supported by a detailed hydraulic analysis to ensure the correct design is used. This kind of intervention also avoids inducing a feeling of false security (the levee effect) in the exposed population, and therefore contributes to increasing their resilience. The aim of the work presented here is to determine an optimal combination of and choice between different types of structural and non-structural measures through the development of a methodology for assessing the real efficiency levels of different measures, using a cost–benefit analysis (CBA) and starting from the estimation of the direct flood damage. The application of the CBA to a case study of the Mela river in northeastern Sicily, which suffered a flooding event in October 2015, is supported by the determination of the real damages after the flood and the modeling of the same damages for alternative scenarios. The results affirm the possibility of reducing or avoiding some of the damage using the proposed flood proofing measures instead of classical ones. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Challenges in Flood Defence Design and Management)

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