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Index Geophysics

A Method to Assess Localized Impact of Better Floodplain Topography on Flood Risk Prediction

Item

Title (Dublin Core)

A Method to Assess Localized Impact of Better Floodplain Topography on Flood Risk Prediction

Description (Dublin Core)

Many studies have highlighted the need for a higher accuracy global digital elevation model (DEM), mainly in river floodplains and deltas and along coastlines. In this paper, we present a method to infer the impact of a better DEM on applications and science using the Lower Zambezi basin as a use case. We propose an analysis based on a targeted observation algorithm to evaluate potential data acquisition subregions in terms of their impact on the prediction of flood risk over the entire study area. Consequently, it becomes trivial to rank these subregions in terms of their contribution to the overall accuracy of flood prediction. The improvement from better topography data may be expressed in terms of economic output and population affected, providing a multifaceted assessment of the value of acquiring better elevation data. Our results highlight the notion that having higher resolution measurements would improve our current large-scale flood inundation prediction capabilities in the Lower Zambezi by at least 30% and significantly reduce the number of people affected as well as the economic loss associated with high magnitude flooding. We believe this procedure to be simple enough to be applied to other regions where high quality topographic and hydrodynamic data are currently unavailable.

Creator (Dublin Core)

Guy J.-P. Schumann
Konstantinos M. Andreadis

Subject (Dublin Core)

Meteorology. Climatology
QC851-999

Publisher (Dublin Core)

Hindawi Limited

Date (Dublin Core)

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Type (Dublin Core)

article

Identifier (Dublin Core)

1687-9309
1687-9317
10.1155/2016/6408319
https://doaj.org/article/6c7b6c2cc68b431b934a4484f585e4ac

Source (Dublin Core)

Advances in Meteorology, Vol 2016 (2016)

Language (Dublin Core)

EN

Relation (Dublin Core)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/6408319
https://doaj.org/toc/1687-9309
https://doaj.org/toc/1687-9317

Provenance (Dublin Core)

Journal Licence: CC BY