Modeling and Forecasting Hurricane Floods over Coastal Urban Watersheds

2024-04-29

Dr. Huilin Gao

To best mitigate the damage from hurricane-induced extreme floods, it is essential to better understand the performances of existing flood risk management measures, as well as future climate change impacts on the floods from an event-based analysis perspective. This webinar introduces three modeling-based studies over Houston watersheds during the flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey (2017). The first study investigates how a set of factors influenced the inflows, peak pool elevations, and outflows of Houston's two most important detention reservoirs, the Addicks, and Barker Reservoirs. The second study tests the skills of streamflow and floodplain inundation forecasts derived from Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts (QPF) of different durations. The last study investigates the future impacts of climate change on hurricane rainfall and, more importantly, subsequent compound flooding at a coastal watershed. The results from these studies can contribute to an improved understanding of intense hurricane-induced extreme flooding. The results can also serve as a basis for the countermeasures needed to prepare for such events in the future.