Assessment of surrogate models for flood inundation: The physics-guided LSG model vs. state-of-the-art machine learning models

•Physics-guided surrogate model is superior for accurate flood predictions.•Physics-guidance is important to ensure good accuracy of a surrogate model.•Surrogate models have limited ability to extrapolate beyond the training data. Hydrodynamic models can accurately simulate flood inundation but are limited by their high computational demand that scales non-linearly with model complexity, resolution, and domain size. Therefore, it is often not feasible to use high-resolution hydrodynamic models for real-time flood predictions or when a large number of predictions are needed for probabilistic flood design. Computationally efficient surrogate models have been developed to address this issue. The recently developed Low-fidelity, Spatial analysis, and Gaussian Process Learning (LSG) model has shown strong performance in both computational efficiency and simulation accuracy. The LSG model is a physics-guided surrogate model that simulates flood inundation by first using an extremely coarse and simplified (i.e. low-fidelity) hydrodynamic model to provide an initial estimate of flood inundation. Then, the low-fidelity estimate is upskilled via Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOF) analysis and Sparse Gaussian Process models to provide accurate high-resolution predictions. Despite the promising results achieved thus far, the LSG model has not been benchmarked against other surrogate models. Such a comparison is needed to fully understand the value of the LSG model and to provide guidance for future research efforts in flood inundation simulation. This study compares the LSG model to four state-of-the-art surrogate flood inundation models. The surrogate models are assessed for their ability to simulate the temporal and spatial evolution of flood inundation for events both within and beyond the range used for model training. The models are evaluated for three distinct case studies in Australia and the United Kingdom. The LSG model is found to be superior in accuracy for both flood extent and water depth, including when applied to flood events outside the range of training data used, while achieving high computational efficiency. In addition, the low-fidelity model is found to play a crucial role in achieving the overall superior performance of the LSG model. [Display omitted]