Simulation of extreme event-based rainfall–runoff process of an urban catchment area using HEC-HMS

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Flood is ranked as the deadliest natural disaster that has been experienced by the urban basins in the world. Its detrimental effects can be minimized by appropriate modeling, analysis and management methods. Such modeling and analysis techniques help in flood risk assessment predicting flood occurrence, aid in the emergency preparation for evacuation and reduce damage from the impact of floods. Numerous modeling techniques are available for analyzing flood events, of which HEC-HMS software is chosen for this explorative study because of its simplicity and as it is a freely available open-source software. The present study aims to develop a rainfall–runoff simulation model by generating peak flow and volume of the extreme rainfall event that occurred on 22 November 1999 in the ungauged Koraiyar basin located south of Tiruchirappalli City in South India. The hydrographs are generated for the basin by using specified hyetograph and frequency storm method to identify the best method to be adopted in the study. Digital elevation model processed with geographic information system (GIS) and HEC-Geo HMS, which is an extension of GIS, is used for the analysis. Using the terrain processing tools in ArcGIS, the basin delineation and parameters such as slope and river length are extracted from the basin. The data generated during the HEC-Geo HMS process are the hydrologic parameters of Koraiyar basin, and it is imported to HEC-HMS modeling for generating peak flow and volume. In the modeling process, HEC-HMS has three modules, namely transform, loss and base flow. SCS curve number and SCS unit hydrograph are used to determine the losses and transformation of rainfall into the runoff process in the present study. The SCS method is adopted because of its simplicity and requirement of limited data approach for modeling. The peak flow and volume prepared from the model are compared with the standard Nash–Sutcliffe values. The frequency storm method has a Nash value of 0.7, which is higher than the value obtained from the specified hyetograph process, and it is chosen as a better model for generating flood peak and volume for different return periods in the basin. It can therefore be adopted for other studies of similar basin conditions.