LISFLOOD-FP 8.0 : the new discontinuous Galerkin shallow-water solver for multi-core CPUs and GPUs

LISFLOOD-FP 8.0 includes second-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG2) and first-order finite-volume (FV1) solvers of the two-dimensional shallow-water equations for modelling a wide range of flows, including rapidly propagating, supercritical flows, shock waves or flows over very smooth surfaces. The solvers are parallelised on multi-core CPU and Nvidia GPU architectures and run existing LISFLOOD-FP modelling scenarios without modification. These new, fully two-dimensional solvers are available alongside the existing local inertia solver (called ACC), which is optimised for multi-core CPUs and integrates with the LISFLOOD-FP sub-grid channel model. The predictive capabilities and computational scalability of the new DG2 and FV1 solvers are studied for two Environment Agency benchmark tests and a real-world fluvial flood simulation driven by rainfall across a 2500 km2 catchment. DG2's second-order-accurate, piecewise-planar representation of topography and flow variables enables predictions on coarse grids that are competitive with FV1 and ACC predictions on 2–4 times finer grids, particularly where river channels are wider than half the grid spacing. Despite the simplified formulation of the local inertia solver, ACC is shown to be spatially second-order-accurate and yields predictions that are close to DG2. The DG2-CPU and FV1-CPU solvers achieve near-optimal scalability up to 16 CPU cores and achieve greater efficiency on grids with fewer than 0.1 million elements. The DG2-GPU and FV1-GPU solvers are most efficient on grids with more than 1 million elements, where the GPU solvers are 2.5–4 times faster than the corresponding 16-core CPU solvers. LISFLOOD-FP 8.0 therefore marks a new step towards operational DG2 flood inundation modelling at the catchment scale. LISFLOOD-FP 8.0 is freely available under the GPL v3 license, with additional documentation and case studies at https://www.seamlesswave.com/LISFLOOD8.0 (last access: 2 June 2021)

Enhancing Operational Flood Detection Solutions through an Integrated Use of Satellite Earth Observations and Numerical Models

Among natural disasters floods are the most common and widespread hazards worldwide (CRED and UNISDR, 2018). Thus, making communities more resilient to flood is a priority, particularly in large flood-prone areas located in emerging countries, because the effects of extreme events severely setback the development process (Wright, 2013). In this context, operational flood preparedness requires novel modeling approaches for a fast delineation of flooding in riverine environments. Starting from a review of advances in the flood modeling domain and a selection of the more suitable open toolsets available in the literature, a new method for the Rapid Estimation of FLood EXtent (REFLEX) at multiple scales (Arcorace et al., 2019) is proposed. The simplified hydraulic modeling adopted in this method consists of a hydro-geomorphological approach based on the Height Above the Nearest Drainage (HAND) model (Nobre et al., 2015). The hydraulic component of this method employs a simplified version of fluid mechanic equations for natural river channels. The input runoff volume is distributed from channel to hillslope cells of the DEM by using an iterative flood volume optimization based on Manning\u2019s equation. The model also includes a GIS-based method to expand HAND contours across neighbor watersheds in flat areas, particularly useful in flood modeling expansion over coastal zones. REFLEX\u2019s flood modeling has been applied in multiple case studies in both surveyed and ungauged river basins. The development and the implementation of the whole modeling chain have enabled a rapid estimation of flood extent over multiple basins at different scales. When possible, flood modeling results are compared with reference flood hazard maps or with detailed flood simulations. Despite the limitations of the method due to the employed simplified hydraulic modeling approach, obtained results are promising in terms of flood extent and water depth. Given the geomorphological nature of the method, it does not require initial and boundary conditions as it is in traditional 1D/2D hydraulic modeling. Therefore, its usage fits better in data-poor environments or large-scale flood modeling. An extensive employment of this slim method has been adopted by CIMA Research Foundation researchers for flood hazard mapping purposes over multiple African countries. As collateral research, multiple types of Earth observation (EO) data have been employed in the REFLEX modeling chain. Remotely sensed data from the satellites, in fact, are not only a source to obtain input digital terrain models but also to map flooded areas. Thus, in this work, different EO data exploitation methods are used for estimating water extent and surface height. Preliminary results by using Copernicus\u2019s Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-3 radar altimetry data highlighted their potential mainly for model calibration and validation. In conclusion, REFLEX combines the advantages of geomorphological models with the ones of traditional hydraulic modeling to ensure a simplified steady flow computation of flooding in open channels. This work highlights the pros and cons of the method and indicates the way forward for future research in the hydro-geomorphological domain

Action Progress Report #2

Report about progress across all WPs and tasks during project month 15-30, going to be used by ISTAB for evaluation of project status and progres