Hurricanes are notorious for wreaking havoc on shorelines, toppling trees, tearing down power lines and, above all, causing severe floods. Conventionally, scientists have used physics-based models to predict where water might collect, overflow and cause flooding. These models capture how physical features of the Earth’s surface and urban landscapes affect the flow of water over the ground.
By incorporating the architecture of city drainage systems and readings from flood gauges into a comprehensive statistical framework, researchers at Texas A&M can now accurately predict the evolution of floods in extreme situations like hurricanes. With their new approach, the research team said their algorithm could forecast the flow of flood water in near real time, which can then lead to timelier emergency response and planning.
“Not knowing where flood water will flow next is particularly detrimental for first responders who need to gauge the level of flooding for their rescue operations,” Dr. Ali Mostafavi said. “Our new algorithm considers the underground drainage channels to provide an accurate representation of how floods propagate. This tool, we think, can vastly help disaster management because first responders will be able to see which way flood water will flow in real time.”
While robust at predicting when and where floods will happen under most rainfall conditions, Mostafavi said these traditional models do not perform as well at predicting floods during incidents of torrential rainfall, like Hurricane Harvey.
“Physics-based models offer one perspective on how floods can spread, which is extremely useful, but the picture they provide is somewhat incomplete,” he said. “We wanted to use existing data on how past floods have spread through the drainage channels to develop a model that would be able to predict, within a certain level of preciseness, how future floods will spread.”
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