Riverine flood risk analysis for a data-incomplete environment - An
example in the Anning River Basin, China
Abstract
Data scarcity is a significant obstacle to both flood simulation and
flood risk analysis. This study used an Integrated Flood Modeling System
(IFMS) to setup a 1D-2D coupled hydrodynamic model in order to simulate
the flood inundation process in the Anning River Basin (ARB) in Sichuan
Province under design flood scenarios with various return periods
(5-year, 10-year, 20-year, 50-year, 100-year). Owing to the lack of
available long-term time series data, we used the design flood flow of a
hydrological station, design standard of levee engineering, and
historical flooding events in order to validate the model. Then, the
comprehensive risk degree ( R-value) method was used to elucidate
the flood risk levels. Finally, we drew a flood risk map of the ARB and
analyzed its flood risk. The statistical analysis produced the following
findings: About 147.5 km 2 of the total inundation
areas in the ARB are inundated at an extremely high-risk level, and the
inundation rate reached 75.18%. Among the key towns present, the
percentage of extremely high-risk areas was greater than 80%. In terms
of settlement flooding, the extremely high risk level had 184 inundation
spots, which was much higher than the other risk categories. These
results indicate that the risk of flooding in ARB is high. This study
used hydrodynamic models with limited measured data in order to simulate
flood inundation and assess the risk of riverine flooding. This study
can serve as a reference for flood studies in similar rivers that lack
measured hydrological data.