An improved rainfall-threshold approach for robust prediction and warning of flood and flash flood hazards

Geraldo Moura Ramos Filho (), Victor Hugo Rabelo Coelho, Emerson da Silva Freitas, Yunqing Xuan () and Cristiano das Neves Almeida
Additional contact information
Geraldo Moura Ramos Filho: Federal University of Paraíba
Victor Hugo Rabelo Coelho: Federal University of Paraíba
Emerson da Silva Freitas: Federal University of Paraíba
Yunqing Xuan: Swansea University Bay Campus
Cristiano das Neves Almeida: Federal University of Paraíba

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2021, vol. 105, issue 3, No 4, 2409-2429

Abstract: Abstract This paper presents an improved method of using threshold of peak rainfall intensity for robust flood/flash flood evaluation and warnings in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The improvements involve the use of two tolerance levels and the delineating of an intermediate threshold by incorporating an exponential curve that relates rainfall intensity and Antecedent Precipitation Index (API). The application of the tolerance levels presents an average increase of 14% in the Probability of Detection (POD) of flood and flash flood occurrences above the upper threshold. Moreover, a considerable exclusion (63%) of non-occurrences of floods and flash floods in between the two thresholds significantly reduce the number of false alarms. The intermediate threshold using the exponential curves also exhibits improvements for almost all time steps of both hydrological hazards, with the best results found for floods correlating 8-h peak intensity and 8 days API, with POD and Positive Predictive Value (PPV) values equal to 81% and 82%, respectively. This study provides strong indications that the new proposed rainfall threshold-based approach can help reduce the uncertainties in predicting the occurrences of floods and flash floods.

Keywords: Flood hazards warning; Rainfall threshold method; Peak rainfall intensity; Antecedent precipitation index; Tolerance limits; Intermediate rainfall intensity threshold (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-020-04405-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:nathaz:v:105:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s11069-020-04405-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-020-04405-x

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().