An Integrated Approach for Realtime Floodmap Forecasting on the Belgian Meuse River

C. Cin (), L. Moens, Ph. Dierickx, G. Bastin and Y. Zech

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2005, vol. 36, issue 1, 237-256

Abstract: The last important floods of the Meuse river have shown the need to design powerful and real-time forecasting tools. With the support of CESAME and the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCL, the Service of Hydrologic Studies (SETHY) of the Walloon Ministry of Equipment and Transport developed two models. Hydromax and Hydroaxe. These two complementary and user-friendly applications work with the data provided by the measurement network of SETHY (raingauges, water levels, discharge measurements, weir-gate positions). Hydromax produces local river flow forecasting for the main natural tributaries of the Meuse. These predictions are used by Hydroaxe to compute discharge propagation and water levels all along the Meuse. In Hydromax, the predictions are produced by a grey box model which involves two main parts. A nonlinear production function computes the effective rainfall from the mean areal rainfall. This part is based on a conceptual approach, the river basin being modelled as a reservoir. In the second part, a linear ARX (AutoRegressive model with eXtra input) transfer function (black box), describes the superficial runoff of the effective rainfall towards the watershed outlet. This transfer function is used to compute short term river flow predictions. Hydroaxe uses a Preissmann finite difference scheme to solve the Saint-Venant equations of shallow-water, completed with the Exchange Discharge Model describing the momentum exchanges between the main channel and the floodplains. The optimisation of the computation time requires a one-dimensional approach, based on a dense (1 point/m2) and accurate (15 cm in x, y, z) topography provided by SETHY and carried out through an original combination of technologies: swath bathymetry and airborne laser (Lidar). With the help of a GIS (Geographic Information System) and the DTM (Digital Terrain Model), the water levels calculated by Hydroaxe are transformed in flooded areas, fitted for an easy and fast overview of the extent of the flood event. Copyright Springer 2005

Keywords: Meuse river; flood; forecasting; real-time; GIS; DTM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-004-4551-x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:36:y:2005:i:1:p:237-256

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-004-4551-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 ().