Abstract
Operational real-time flood forecast is often done on the prediction of discharges at specific gauges using hydrological models. Hydrodynamic models, which can produce inundation maps, are computationally demanding and often cannot be used directly for that purpose. The FloodEvac framework has been developed in order to enable 2D flood inundations map to be forecasted at real-time. The framework is based on a database of pre-recorded synthetic events. In this paper, the framework is improved by generating a database based on rescaled historical river discharge events. This historical database includes a wider variety of runoff curves, including non-Gaussian and multi-peak shapes that better reflect the characteristics and the behavior of the natural streams. Hence, a hybrid approach is proposed by joining the historical and the existing synthetic database. The increased number of scenarios in the hybrid database allows reliable predictions, thus improving the robustness and applicability of real-time flood forecasts.
Highlights
River flood events are a widespread problem that affect the lives of millions of people around the world
We focus on improving the runoff database by including scaled historical flow data series in order to provide a more robust hybrid database
The FloodEvac framework for offline flood inundation forecast was extended to improve its performance by implementing different types of offline runoff databases
Summary
River flood events are a widespread problem that affect the lives of millions of people around the world. By implementing tools such as Early Warning Systems (EWS). EWSs are able to forecast flood events in real-time and issue warnings to the authorities or the population. They can provide forecasts of the magnitude and extension of flood events and on the severity of possible damages, providing a valid and effective tool for practical emergency management. In order to prevent and mitigate casualties and economic losses, the EU Floods Directive clearly states that flood risk management plans should take into account flood forecasts and Early Warning Systems (EWS) built in a way that they are able to consider the characteristics of a river basin or sub-basin [5,6]. Researchers and engineers have been extensively working on the development of cost-effective and rapid methods in the last decades [7]
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