Assessing climate-change-induced flood risk in the Conasauga River watershed: an application of ensemble hydrodynamic inundation modeling
Open Access
- 2 June 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Copernicus GmbH in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
- Vol. 21 (6), 1739-1757
- https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-1739-2021
Abstract
This study evaluates the impact of potential future climate change on flood regimes, floodplain protection, and electricity infrastructures across the Conasauga River watershed in the southeastern United States through ensemble hydrodynamic inundation modeling. The ensemble streamflow scenarios were simulated by the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) driven by (1) 1981–2012 Daymet meteorological observations and (2) 11 sets of downscaled global climate models (GCMs) during the 1966–2005 historical and 2011–2050 future periods. Surface inundation was simulated using a GPU-accelerated Two-dimensional Runoff Inundation Toolkit for Operational Needs (TRITON) hydrodynamic model. A total of 9 out of the 11 GCMs exhibit an increase in the mean ensemble flood inundation areas. Moreover, at the 1 % annual exceedance probability level, the flood inundation frequency curves indicate a ∼ 16 km2 increase in floodplain area. The assessment also shows that even after flood-proofing, four of the substations could still be affected in the projected future period. The increase in floodplain area and substation vulnerability highlights the need to account for climate change in floodplain management. Overall, this study provides a proof-of-concept demonstration of how the computationally intensive hydrodynamic inundation modeling can be used to enhance flood frequency maps and vulnerability assessment under the changing climatic conditions.Funding Information
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (4000164401)
This publication has 62 references indexed in Scilit:
- Global flood risk under climate changeNature Climate Change, 2013
- Assessment of GPU computational enhancement to a 2D flood modelEnvironmental Modelling & Software, 2011
- Implications of 21st century climate change for the hydrology of Washington StateClimatic Change, 2010
- Performance assessment of topologically diverse power systems subjected to hurricane eventsReliability Engineering & System Safety, 2010
- Urbanization, climate change and flood policy in the United StatesClimatic Change, 2010
- Climate Change and Floodplain Management in the United StatesClimatic Change, 2006
- Increasing risk of great floods in a changing climateNature, 2002
- Generating surfaces of daily meteorological variables over large regions of complex terrainJournal of Hydrology, 1997
- A new look at the statistical model identificationIEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 1974
- Asymptotic Theory of Certain "Goodness of Fit" Criteria Based on Stochastic ProcessesThe Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 1952