Description

Flooding is a major threat for many small island states in the world. Flooding is often caused by heavy and intense rainfall events, such as tropical cyclones. These island states have to develop a disaster management strategy, but often they lack sufficient information on the hazard itself and its triggering factors. Therefore, developing a designer storm with a certain probability is often not a suitable solution for hazard impact assessment. In this study the focus is on exploring the possibilities to develop worst-case flooding scenarios using the LISEM model, forced with (remote sensing) rainfall data, land use information and elements at risk information. The student will be challenged to develop and assess the severity of multiple flood hazard scenarios as various vulnerable sectors are affected by a hazardous flood event.

Objectives and Methodology

For this research topic the following main research question(s) could be considered:
- What key factors define a worst-case flooding scenario (rainfall, landuse, DEM, etc)?
- How different is the flood comparing a standard design storm as input with real-life storm scenarios?
- What are low-cost adaptation measures to decrease the flood hazard?
- How do the probabilities of a tropical cyclone translate in local flood hazard?

The student will be challenged to develop a framework to develop and test extreme weather scenarios and its impact on the flood hazard. Available rainfall data will be analyzed to define extreme weather events. Multiple runs of the flood hazard LiSEM are foreseen to assess the impact of these various rainfall events and catchment characteristics on the flood events. The student will develop a decision tree system, in which various what-if scenarios will be tested (e.g. landuse changes, displacement of key infrastructures, etc.).

Further reading