Modelling elevations, inundation extent and hazard risk for extreme flood events

Kvocka, Davor 2017. Modelling elevations, inundation extent and hazard risk for extreme flood events. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

Preview	PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Download (14MB) | Preview
	PDF - Supplemental Material Restricted to Repository staff only Download (184kB)

Abstract

Climate change is expected to result in more frequent occurrences of extreme flood events, such as flash flooding and large scale river flooding. Therefore, there is a need for accurate flood risk assessment schemes in areas prone to extreme flooding. This research study investigates what flood risk assessment tools and procedures should be used for flood risk assessment in areas where the emergence of extreme flood events is possible. The first objective was to determine what type of flood inundation models should be used for predicting the flood elevations, velocities and inundation extent for extreme flood events. Therefore, there different flood inundation model structures were used to model a well-documented extreme flood event. The obtained results suggest that it is necessary to incorporate shock-capturing algorithms in the solution procedure when modelling extreme flood events, since these algorithms prevent the formation of spurious oscillations and provide a more realistic simulation of the flood levels. The second objective was to investigate the appropriateness of the “simplification strategy” (i.e. improving simulation results by increasing roughness parameter) when used as a flood risk assessment modelling tool for areas susceptible to extreme flooding. The obtained results suggest that applying such strategies can lead to significantly erroneous predictions of the peak water levels and the inundation extent, and thus to inadequate flood protection design. The third and final objective was to determine what type of flood hazard assessment methods should be used for assessing the flood hazard to people caused by extreme flooding. Therefore, two different flood hazard assessment criteria were modelled for three extreme flood events. The predicted results suggest that in areas prone to extreme flooding, the flood hazard indices should be predicted with physics-based formulae, as these methods consider all of the physical forces acting on a human body in floodwaters, take into account the rapid changes in the flow regime, which often occur for extreme events, and enable a rapid assessment of the degree of flood hazard to be made in a short time period.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Engineering
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Flash floods; Flood risk; DIVAST-TVD; Shock-capturing models; Flood hazard; Human stability in floodwaters.
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 July 2017
Last Modified:	20 Apr 2021 13:22
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/101761

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item