A unified approach for hydrological modeling of arid catchments for flood hazards assessment: case study of wadi Itwad, southwest of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

A unified and systematic approach for hydrological modeling is presented for assessing flood hazards in arid and semi-arid regions with wadi Itwad as a case study. The approach consists of the following steps: (1) estimation of the design storm duration, (2) estimation of the design rainfall depth, (3) development of the design storm hyetograph, (4) setup of the watershed hydrological system, (5) infiltration tests for estimate of soil characteristics, (6) land use and land cover analysis for curve number estimation, (7) how to incorporate dams (if any) and their reservoir characteristics for reservoir routing analysis, and (8) performing hydrological modeling under different scenarios, namely: lumped with and without the effect of dams and routed scenarios. An emphasis is made on the comparison between the SCS unit hydrograph and the unit hydrograph (UH) estimated for stream flow data. The UH method produces hydrographs that are typical of arid regions. It is characterized by a steep rising limb with a short time to peak, a rapid recession to zero base flow, and less flood volume due to transmission losses. The scenarios show that the lumped case overdesigns the protection schemes, while the lumped central basin with detention dams storing the flood water completely leads to underdesign in the downstream area. The routed scenario is more realistic, since it considers the detention dams with an overflow. The runoff volume (66.6 MCM) of the 10-year return period of the routed scenario is in the order of magnitude within the observed historical data (50 to 100 MCM) reported in the literature. The study concludes that the proposed approach is robust and takes into account the Saudi arid environment while performing flood risk assessment in KSA.