Impact of the Rainfall Duration and Temporal Rainfall Distribution Defined Using the Huff Curves on the Hydraulic Flood Modelling Results

Abstract

In the case of ungauged catchments, different procedures can be used to derive the design hydrograph and design peak discharge, which are crucial input data for the design of different hydrotechnical engineering structures, or the production of flood hazard maps. One of the possible approaches involves using a hydrological model where one can calculate the design hydrograph through the design of a rainfall event. This study investigates the impact of the design rainfall on the combined one-dimensional/two-dimensional (1D/2D) hydraulic modelling results. The Glinščica Stream catchment located in Slovenia (central Europe) is used as a case study. Ten different design rainfall events were compared for 10 and 100-year return periods, where we used Huff curves for the design rainfall event definition. The results indicate that the selection of the design rainfall event should be regarded as an important step, since the hydraulic modelling results for different scenarios differ significantly. In the presented experimental case study, the maximum flooded area extent was twice as large as the minimum one, and the maximum water velocity over flooded areas was more than 10 times larger than the minimum one. This can lead to the production of very different flood hazard maps, and consequently planning very different flood protection schemes.

Hydrological Hazard: Analysis and Prevention

“…Among the 13 articles published in the Special Issue, 1 is a Technical Note (Terranova et al [4]), 11 are Research Articles [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], and one is a Case Report (Schmid-Breton et al [16]). Figure 1 compares the geographic distribution of the authors and research teams publishing in the Special Issue (Figure 1a), as well as of the case studies and demonstration sites ( Figure 1b).…”

“…Bezak et al [5] investigated the impact of the design rainfall on the combined 1D/2D hydraulic modelling results in the Glinščica Stream catchment (Slovenia), which is ungauged in terms of discharges. In particular, Bezak et al [5] evaluated 10 different design rainfall events (scenarios) that were used as inputs to the hydrological model. Using calibrated and validated hydrological models, the inputs for the hydraulic model were determined.…”

“…Word cloud of the keywords published in the papers[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] of this Special Issue.…”

Optimal temporal distribution curves for the classification of heavy precipitation using hierarchical clustering on principal components

“…Recently, an improvement on Huff curves was proposed by separately describing the rising and falling limbs of normalized rainstorms (Pan et al, 2017). Also, Bezak et al (2018) recommend the use of Huff's curves for the selection of DH in hydraulic flood modelling. Despite the dispute, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides temporal distributions similar to Huff's in the Precipitation-Frequency Atlas of the United States (Perica et al, 2012) and in a number of different regions or countries Huff's curves were used (Azli and Rao, 2010;Guo et al, 2001;Loukas and Quick, 1996;Yin et al, 2016;Zeimetz et al, 2018).…”

A 60-Minute Design Rainstorm for the Urban Area of Yangpu District, Shanghai, China

“…In order to determine the slope and diameter of the pipeline when designing drainage pipelines, models that simulate urban waterlogging are developed. Rainfall is the input of most kinds of hydrological and hydraulic models, whose accuracy and resolution directly affect the correctness of the model output [5,6]. Usually, a design rainstorm with a given return period is used in such models.…”