Abstract

With rapid urbanization, floods that occur are more frequently associated with non-riverine, urban flooding. Reliable and efficient simulation of rainstorm inundation in an urban environment is profound for risk analysis and sustainable development. Although sophisticated hydrodynamic models are now available to simulate the urban flooding processes with a high accuracy, the complexity and heavy computation requirement render these models difficult to apply. Moreover, a large number of input data describing the complex urban underlying surfaces is required to setup the models, which are typically unavailable in reality. In this paper, a simple and efficient urban rainstorm inundation simulation method, named URIS, was developed based on a geographic information system (GIS) with limited input data. The URIS method is a simplified distributed hydrological model, integrating three components of the soil conservation service (SCS) module, surface flow module, and drainage flow module. Cumulative rainfall-runoff, output from the SCS model, feeds the surface flow model, while the drainage flow module is an important waterlogging mitigation measure. The central urban area of Shanghai in China was selected as a study case to calibrate and verify the method. It was demonstrated that the URIS is capable of characterizing the spatiotemporal dynamic processes of urban inundation and drainage under a range of scenarios, such as different rainstorm patterns with varying return periods and different alterations of drainage diameters. URIS is therefore characterized with high efficiency, reasonable data input, and low hardware requirements and should be an alternative to hydrodynamic models. It is useful for urgent urban flood inundation estimation and is applicable for other cities in supporting emergency rescue and sustainable urban planning.

Highlights

  • Urban floods occur frequently worldwide, and their losses and impacts are increasing rapidly [1,2,3]

  • After the 60th minute, waterlogging disappears gradually due to the stop of the precipitation, but the drainage and infiltration continues

  • Our results showed that the urban rainstorm inundation simulation (URIS) model is a useful alternative to implement hydrodynamic modeling in an urban environment

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Summary

Introduction

Urban floods occur frequently worldwide, and their losses and impacts are increasing rapidly [1,2,3]. Many hydrologic models have become available in urban flooding modeling, including the rapid flood spreading methodology (RFSM) [9], GIS-based urban flood inundation model (GUFIM) [10], urban storm inundation simulation method (USISM) [11], and so on. These models are based on water balance equations and have the advantage of a fast computational speed. A simplified modeling approach that fulfills both rapid flooding calculation and inundation process simulation is a meaningful research direction for urgent flooding dynamic forecasting

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