Estimation of the Relative Severity of Floods in Small Ungauged Catchments for Preliminary Observations on Flash Flood Preparedness: A Case Study in Korea

Eung Seok Kim and Hyun Il Choi
Additional contact information
Eung Seok Kim: Department of Civil Engineering, Sunmoon University, 100, Kalsan-ri, Tangjeong-myeon, Asan-si, Chungnam-do 336-708, Korea
Hyun Il Choi: Department of Civil Engineering, Yeungnam University, 214-1, Dae-dong, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongbuk-do 712-749, Korea

IJERPH, 2012, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: An increase in the occurrence of sudden local flooding of great volume and short duration has caused significant danger and loss of life and property in Korea as well as many other parts of the World. Since such floods usually accompanied by rapid runoff and debris flow rise quite quickly with little or no advance warning to prevent flood damage, this study presents a new flash flood indexing methodology to promptly provide preliminary observations regarding emergency preparedness and response to flash flood disasters in small ungauged catchments. Flood runoff hydrographs are generated from a rainfall-runoff model for the annual maximum rainfall series of long-term observed data in the two selected small ungauged catchments. The relative flood severity factors quantifying characteristics of flood runoff hydrographs are standardized by the highest recorded maximum value, and then averaged to obtain the flash flood index only for flash flood events in each study catchment. It is expected that the regression equations between the proposed flash flood index and rainfall characteristics can provide the basis database of the preliminary information for forecasting the local flood severity in order to facilitate flash flood preparedness in small ungauged catchments.

Keywords: flash flood index; flash flood preparedness; flood severity; runoff hydrograph (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/4/1507/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/4/1507/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:9:y:2012:i:4:p:1507-1522:d:17265

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().