Abstract
Pluvial flooding is caused by localized intense rainfall and the flood models used to assess it are normally applied on a city (or part of a city) scale using local rainfall records and a high resolution digital elevation model (DEM). Here, we attempt to model pluvial flooding on a continental scale and calculate the percentage of area flooded for all European cities for a 10-year return period for hourly rainfall (RP10). Difficulties in obtaining hourly rainfall records compromise the estimation of each city RP10 and the Europe-wide DEM spatial resolution is low relative to those typically used for individual case-studies. Nevertheless, the modelling capabilities and necessary computing power make this type of continental study now possible. This is a first attempt at continental city flooding modelling and our methodology was designed so that our results can easily be updated as better/more data becomes available. The results for each city depend on the interplay of rainfall intensity, the elevation map of the city and the flow paths that are created. In general, cities with lower percentage of city flooded are in the north and west coastal areas of Europe, while the higher percentages are seen in continental and Mediterranean areas.
Highlights
Pluvial flooding is caused by intense rainfall that exceeds the capacity of the urban drainage system and is normally studied using flood models that can provide depth and velocity of surface water associated with rainfall events of specified intensity [1]
We calculated the percentage of city flooded for 571 European cities, based on their RP10 calculated using a Europe-wide regression model of a composite of best available data
Difficulties were encountered in terms of data availability, mainly for hourly rainfall records which compromises the estimation of each city RP10
Summary
Pluvial flooding is caused by intense rainfall that exceeds the capacity of the urban drainage system and is normally studied using flood models that can provide depth and velocity of surface water associated with rainfall events of specified intensity [1]. These models are typically applied on a small area (a city, or often just a part of a city), using local rainfall records and a high resolution digital elevation model (DEM). We take advantage of emerging global datasets and cloud computing to provide a preliminary assessment of pluvial flood impacts for 571 cities across the continent of Europe. Regressions were used to calculate the mean annual flood and they concluded that the best regressions used just catchment area and annual average rainfall as estimators
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