Development of a computationally efficient urban flood modelling approach

© 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, London. This paper presents a parsimonious and data-driven modelling approach to simulate urban floods. Flood levels simulated by detailed 1D-2D hydrodynamic models can be emulated using the presented conceptual modelling approach with a very short calculation time. In addition, the model detail can be adjusted, allowing the modeller to focus on flood-prone locations. This results in efficiently parameterized models that can be tailored to applications. The simulated flood levels are transformed into flood extent maps using a high resolution (0.5-meter) digital terrain model in GIS. To illustrate the developed methodology, a case study for the city of Ghent in Belgium is elaborated. The configured conceptual model mimics the flood levels of a detailed 1D-2D hydrodynamic Info Works ICM model accurately,while the calculation time is an order of magnitude of 10 6 times shorter than the original highly detailed model. The proposed models can be used for numerous applications of urban water management requiring fast models, such as early warning systems, uncertainty analyses and optimization, e.g. to determine real-time storage operations.