Flood Inundation Modelling and Assessment of Current and Future Flood Risk

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2020) | Viewed by 22921

Special Issue Editors

CSIRO Land & Water, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Interests: hydrology; floodplain hydraulics; inundation modelling; water resources assessment; sediment transport; hydrological connectivity and linking hydrology and ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
CSIRO Land & Water, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, Australia
Interests: mapping and monitoring surface water dynamics using remote sensing; multitemporal image analysis for environmental applications; synthetic aperture radar applications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is well recognised that floods are one of most deadly natural disasters on Earth. Improved knowledge of flood inundation, frequency, and duration is a prerequisite for disaster management, infrastructure development, and maintaining environmental integrity. An improved flood management strategy considers floodplain inundation mapping as an essential part of river basin management from engineering, ecological, and environmental perspectives.

We are inviting original research articles that contribute to the continuing efforts of understanding complex hydrological and hydraulic processes, the accurate estimation of flood inundation for historical events, and plausible prediction of changes in inundation dynamics under projected future climate and infrastructure development. This Special Issue also welcomes manuscripts on uncertainty analysis and the application of flood modelling to support decision making.

The topics for this Special Issue include, but not limited to:

  • Flood frequency analysis: regional- and continental-scale flood frequency analysis, variability, and trend analysis;
  • Inundation modelling: advances in hydrodynamic modelling techniques, comparison between modelling techniques, and 1D, 2D, combined 1D–2D, and 3D flood modelling;
  • Inundation mapping: advances in remote sensing techniques, strength and limitations of MODIS, Landsat, Sentinel, and other satellite data as well as drone imagery;
  • Impact of future climate, land use, and infrastructure development on flood frequency and inundation dynamics;
  • Integration of remote sensing and hydrodynamic modelling;
  • Utilising high-performance computing facilities for flood inundation modelling;
  • Flood risk mapping;
  • Flood risk assessment for future climate and land use scenarios;
  • Sea-level rise and coastal flooding;
  • Uncertainty in flood modelling;
  • Other applications of flood modelling to support decision making.

Dr. Fazlul Karim
Dr. Catherine Ticehurst
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • river basin
  • floodplain
  • flood frequency
  • hydrodynamic modelling
  • remote sensing
  • SRTM
  • LiDAR
  • MODIS
  • Landsat
  • Sentinel
  • floods
  • inundation
  • flood hazard
  • uncertainty analysis

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 3951 KiB  
Article
Coastal Flooding Risk Assessment Using a GIS-Based Spatial Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Approach
by Vahid Hadipour, Freydoon Vafaie and Kaveh Deilami
Water 2020, 12(9), 2379; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w12092379 - 25 Aug 2020
Cited by 34 | Viewed by 5845
Abstract
Coastal areas are expected to be at a higher risk of flooding when climate change-induced sea-level rise (SLR) is combined with episodic rises in sea level. Flood susceptibility mapping (FSM), mostly based on statistical and machine learning methods, has been widely employed to [...] Read more.
Coastal areas are expected to be at a higher risk of flooding when climate change-induced sea-level rise (SLR) is combined with episodic rises in sea level. Flood susceptibility mapping (FSM), mostly based on statistical and machine learning methods, has been widely employed to mitigate flood risk; however, they neglect exposure and vulnerability assessment as the key components of flood risk. Flood risk assessment is often conducted by quantitative methods (e.g., probabilistic). Such assessment uses analytical and empirical techniques to construct the physical vulnerability curves of elements at risk, but the role of people’s capacity, depending on social vulnerability, remains limited. To address this gap, this study developed a semiquantitative method, based on the spatial multi-criteria decision analysis (SMCDA). The model combines two representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios: RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5, and factors triggering coastal flooding in Bandar Abbas, Iran. It also employs an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) model to weight indicators of hazard, exposure, and social vulnerability components. Under the most extreme flooding scenario, 14.8% of flooded areas were identified as high and very high risk, mostly located in eastern, western, and partly in the middle of the City. The results of this study can be employed by decision-makers to apply appropriate risk reduction strategies in high-risk flooding zones. Full article
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10 pages, 1784 KiB  
Article
Image Segmentation Methods for Flood Monitoring System
by Nur Atirah Muhadi, Ahmad Fikri Abdullah, Siti Khairunniza Bejo, Muhammad Razif Mahadi and Ana Mijic
Water 2020, 12(6), 1825; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w12061825 - 26 Jun 2020
Cited by 26 | Viewed by 5714
Abstract
Flood disasters are considered annual disasters in Malaysia due to their consistent occurrence. They are among the most dangerous disasters in the country. Lack of data during flood events is the main constraint to improving flood monitoring systems. With the rapid development of [...] Read more.
Flood disasters are considered annual disasters in Malaysia due to their consistent occurrence. They are among the most dangerous disasters in the country. Lack of data during flood events is the main constraint to improving flood monitoring systems. With the rapid development of information technology, flood monitoring systems using a computer vision approach have gained attention over the last decade. Computer vision requires an image segmentation technique to understand the content of the image and to facilitate analysis. Various segmentation algorithms have been developed to improve results. This paper presents a comparative study of image segmentation techniques used in extracting water information from digital images. The segmentation methods were evaluated visually and statistically. To evaluate the segmentation methods statistically, the dice similarity coefficient and the Jaccard index were calculated to measure the similarity between the segmentation results and the ground truth images. Based on the experimental results, the hybrid technique obtained the highest values among the three methods, yielding an average of 97.70% for the dice score and 95.51% for the Jaccard index. Therefore, we concluded that the hybrid technique is a promising segmentation method compared to the others in extracting water features from digital images. Full article
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18 pages, 13806 KiB  
Article
A Proposed Simultaneous Calculation Method for Flood by River Water, Inland Flood, and Storm Surge at Tidal Rivers of Metropolitan Cities: A Case Study of Katabira River in Japan
by Naoki Koyama and Tadashi Yamada
Water 2020, 12(6), 1769; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w12061769 - 22 Jun 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3310
Abstract
All metropolitan cities in Japan are located in low-lying areas that surround ports. Accordingly, significant floods that occur in these cities will trigger the simultaneous occurrence of flooding by river water and inland flooding. However, existing studies have focused on the impact of [...] Read more.
All metropolitan cities in Japan are located in low-lying areas that surround ports. Accordingly, significant floods that occur in these cities will trigger the simultaneous occurrence of flooding by river water and inland flooding. However, existing studies have focused on the impact of flooding by river water, inland flooding, and high tide in tidal rivers, and disaster mitigation measures focused on detailed flooding processes in such flooding areas have not been conducted thus far. This study focused on a tidal river, i.e., Katabira River of Yokohama city, one of Japan’s metropolitan cities, to construct a simultaneous occurrence model of flooding by river water and inland flooding, including the impact of a high tide. Numerical analysis was conducted using this model, and the results show that the flooded area significantly changed from 0.004 to 0.149 km2 according to the tide level of the estuary. Moreover, by simultaneously solving the calculation of flooding by river water and inland flooding, we found that there was a difference of 50 min between the occurrences of these floods. Therefore, we found that there is a possibility that, if evacuation is not conducted at the time of occurrence of inland flooding, evacuation during subsequent river-water flooding may not be possible. Based on these results, our proposed method was found to be useful for tidal rivers of metropolitan cities. Full article
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16 pages, 5300 KiB  
Article
Modelling Flood-Induced Wetland Connectivity and Impacts of Climate Change and Dam
by Fazlul Karim, Steve Marvanek, Linda E. Merrin, Daryl Nielsen, Justin Hughes, Danial Stratford and Carmel Pollino
Water 2020, 12(5), 1278; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w12051278 - 30 Apr 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3178
Abstract
Hydrological connectivity between rivers and wetlands is considered one of the key critical factors for the integrity of floodplain landscapes. This study is a comprehensive modelling exercise on quantifying flood-induced wetland connectivity and the potential impacts of climate and water storage in an [...] Read more.
Hydrological connectivity between rivers and wetlands is considered one of the key critical factors for the integrity of floodplain landscapes. This study is a comprehensive modelling exercise on quantifying flood-induced wetland connectivity and the potential impacts of climate and water storage in an unregulated river basin in northern Australia. Flood inundation was simulated using a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model and the connectivities between wetlands and rivers were calculated using geoprocessing tools in ArcGIS. Wetlands in the floodplain were identified using waterbody maps derived from satellite imagery. A broadly representative sample of 20 wetlands were selected from 158 wetlands in the Mitchell basin considering location, size and spatial distribution. Five flood events ranging from 1 in 2 to 1 in 100 years were investigated to evaluate how connectivity changes with flood magnitude. Connectivities were assessed for the current condition as well as for two scenarios of future climate (Cwet and Cdry) and one scenario of dam storage. Results showed that a 1 in 100 years event inundated about 5450 km2 of land compared to 1160 km2 for a 1 in 2 years event. Average connectivity of wetlands in the Mitchell basin varies from 1 to 5 days for the floods of 1 in 2 to 1 in 26 years. As expected, a large flood produces longer duration of connectivity relative to a small flood. Results also showed that reduction in mean connectivity under a dryer climate (up to 1.8 days) is higher than the possibility of increase under a wet climate (up to 1 day). The impacts of a water storage, in the headwater catchment, are highly pronounced in terms of inundation and wetland connectivity (e.g., mean connectivity reduced by 1.7 days). The relative change in connectivity is higher for a small flood compared to that of a large event. These results demonstrate that there is a possibility of both increase and decease in connectivity under future climate. However, any water storage will negatively impact the connectivity between floodplain waterbodies and thus reduce the material exchange resulting in a reduction in primary and secondary productions in rivers and wetlands. Full article
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16 pages, 2316 KiB  
Article
How do Interactive Flood Simulation Models Influence Decision-Making? An Observations-Based Evaluation Method
by Johannes G. Leskens, Marcela Brugnach and Arjen Hoekstra
Water 2019, 11(11), 2427; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w11112427 - 19 Nov 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3243
Abstract
Interactive flood simulations models are computer models that are usable for practitioners during work sessions, allowing demand-driven flood simulations together with domain experts. It is assumed among developers of such models that these interactive models better serve decision-making processes, resulting in better informed [...] Read more.
Interactive flood simulations models are computer models that are usable for practitioners during work sessions, allowing demand-driven flood simulations together with domain experts. It is assumed among developers of such models that these interactive models better serve decision-making processes, resulting in better informed decisions about, for example, evacuation and rescue operations. In order to test this assumption, we present a method that uses observations to monitor and evaluate decision-making processes in work sessions where interactive models are applied. We present a theoretical framework as a basis for this method, based on theory of collaborative knowledge construction, and operationalize this into measurable metrics. We demonstrate our method in two cases of flood disaster management and illustrate and discuss the strengths and weaknesses. Full article
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