High-Resolution Hydrological-Hydraulic Modeling of Urban Floods Using InfoWorks ICM

Abstract

Malaysia, being a tropical country located near the equatorial doldrums, experiences the annual occurrence of flood hazards due to monsoon rainfalls and urban development. In recent years, environmental policies in the country have shifted towards sustainable flood risk management. As part of the development of flood forecasting and warning systems, this study presented the urban flood simulation using InfoWorks ICM hydrological−hydraulic modeling of the Damansara catchment as a case study. The response of catchments to the rainfall was modeled using the probability distributed moisture (PDM) model due to its capability for large catchments with long-term runoff prediction. The interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IFSAR) technique was used to obtain high-resolution digital terrain model (DTM) data. The calibrated and validated model was first applied to investigate the effectiveness of the existing regional ponds on flood mitigation. For a 100-year flood, the extent of flooded areas decreased from 12.41 km2 to 3.61 km2 as a result of 64-ha ponds in the catchment, which is equivalent to a 71% reduction. The flood hazard maps were then generated based on several average recurrence intervals (ARIs) and uniform rainfall depths, and the results showed that both parameters had significant influences on the magnitude of flooding in terms of flood depth and extent. These findings are important for understanding urban flood vulnerability and resilience, which could help in sustainable management planning to deal with urban flooding issues.

Application of PCSWMM for the 1-D and 1-D–2-D Modeling of Urban Flooding in Damansara Catchment, Malaysia

“…The comparison of the observed and modeled water level time series is shown in Figure 4. The previous results from another proprietary software, InfoWorks Integrated Catchment Modeling (ICM) [43], are also presented for comparison purposes in the same plot. In Figure 4, the overall water profiles match well with the observation for both the calibration and validation periods.…”

Urban Inundation under Different Rainstorm Scenarios in Lin’an City, China

“…Then they used MIKE FLOOD coupling to simulate the inundation extents and depths of the study area under different grades of flood. Sidek et al used the InfoWorks ICM to construct a 1D river and 2D surface inundation coupling model in the Damansara catchment, Malaysia [ 28 ]. The model was verified by monitoring data, and the results showed that the model has a good accuracy (R 2 > 0.8).…”

Analysis of drainage efficiency under extreme precipitation events based on numerical simulation

“…The municipal infrastructure needs to update with appropriate flood management (Wang et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2019), and since the capability of the sewerage system in the Zhengzhou metropolitan region is insufficient, further improvements are required. Wang et al (2021) utilized remoting sense images with high precision (Sidek et al, 2021) coupled with urban hydrological models (Chen et al, 2021) to evaluate the possibility of potential flood hazards, and Wu et al (2021) represented the correlation between social indicators (such as population) and direct economic losses. Furthermore, Lv, Meng, et al (2021) introduced the Flood Inundated Depth-Loss Rate Function (FILF), accompanied by images of land-use classification and the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to estimate the losses caused by extreme precipitation.…”

“…Ogden et al (2011) revealed the correlation between surface floods and drainage discharges in extreme precipitation, and they showed that changes in imperviousness could significantly affect flood peaks. Sidek et al (2021) Other approaches to estimating drainage capability include numerical simulation (Lv, Wang, et al, 2021) and physical experiments (Naves et al, 2020) using a hydrodynamic model, which presented the conversion process from precipitation in the watershed to the drainage network (Martínez et al, 2021). Imk et al (2021) Researchers introduced a new methodology combining hydrodynamics with hydrological models to simulate water transportation from the surface to drainage pipes and obtained the relationship between precipitation and metropolitan submergence.…”

“…Ogden et al (2011) revealed the correlation between surface floods and drainage discharges in extreme precipitation, and they showed that changes in imperviousness could significantly affect flood peaks. Sidek et al (2021) used the IFSAR technique to obtain high‐resolution DTM data and combine it with the PDM model to construct the InfoWorks‐Hydrological model. Ct et al (2021) presented a fast‐dynamic GIS‐based flood model FloodStroem integrated with a drainage network to evaluate the urban floods and relative losses.…”