Flash flood simulations for an Egyptian city - mitigation measures and impact of infiltration

Within this work, the impact of mitigation measures and infiltration on flash floods is investigated by using a 2D robust shallow water model including infiltration with the Green-Ampt model. The results show the combined effects of infiltration and mitigation measures as well as the effectiveness of bypass channels in addition to retention basins. Retention basins at appropriate locations could reduce the maximum water depth at critical locations by 23%, while the additional implementation of drainage channels lead to a reduction of 75%, considering also infiltration lead to a further reduction of 97%. If infiltration was considered without mitigation measures, the peak water depth was reduced by 67%. For an exceptional extreme event the measures lead to a reduction of 73% at some locations, while at other locations the overflow from retention basins due to overstraining generated even higher inundations with an increase of 58%

Wave propagation speeds and source term influences in single and integral porosity shallow water equations

In urban flood modeling, so-called porosity shallow water equations (PSWEs), which conceptually account for unresolved structures, e.g., buildings, are a promising approach to addressing high CPU times associated with state-of-the-art explicit numerical methods. The PSWE can be formulated with a single porosity term, referred to as the single porosity shallow water model (SP model), which accounts for both the reduced storage in the cell and the reduced conveyance, or with two porosity terms: one accounting for the reduced storage in the cell and another accounting for the reduced conveyance. The latter form is referred to as an integral or anisotropic porosity shallow water model (AP model). The aim of this study was to analyze the differences in wave propagation speeds of the SP model and the AP model and the implications of numerical model results. First, augmented Roe-type solutions were used to assess the influence of the source terms appearing in both models. It is shown that different source terms have different influences on the stability of the models. Second, four computational test cases were presented and the numerical models were compared. It is observed in the eigenvalue-based analysis as well as in the computational test cases that the models converge if the conveyance porosity in the AP model is close to the storage porosity. If the porosity values differ significantly, the AP model yields different wave propagation speeds and numerical fluxes from those of the BP model. In this study, the ratio between the conveyance and storage porosities was determined to be the most significant parameter

Comparison of depth-averaged concentration and bed load flux sediment transport models of dam-break flow

This paper presents numerical simulations of dam-break flow over a movable bed. Two different mathematical models were compared: a fully coupled formulation of shallow water equations with erosion and deposition terms (a depth-averaged concentration flux model), and shallow water equations with a fully coupled Exner equation (a bed load flux model). Both models were discretized using the cell-centered finite volume method, and a second-order Godunov-type scheme was used to solve the equations. The numerical flux was calculated using a Harten, Lax, and van Leer approximate Riemann solver with the contact wave restored (HLLC). A novel slope source term treatment that considers the density change was introduced to the depth-averaged concentration flux model to obtain higher-order accuracy. A source term that accounts for the sediment flux was added to the bed load flux model to reflect the influence of sediment movement on the momentum of the water. In a one-dimensional test case, a sensitivity study on different model parameters was carried out. For the depth-averaged concentration flux model, Manning's coefficient and sediment porosity values showed an almost linear relationship with the bottom change, and for the bed load flux model, the sediment porosity was identified as the most sensitive parameter. The capabilities and limitations of both model concepts are demonstrated in a benchmark experimental test case dealing with dam-break flow over variable bed topography

Urban flood modeling using shallow water equations with depth-dependent anisotropic porosity

The shallow water model with anisotropic porosity conceptually takes into account the unresolved subgrid-scale features, e.g. microtopography or buildings. This enables computationally efficient simulations that can be run on coarser grids, whereas reasonable accuracy is maintained via the introduction of porosity. This article presents a novel numerical model for the depth-averaged equations with anisotropic porosity. The porosity is calculated using the probability mass function of the subgrid-scale features in each cell and updated in each time step. The model is tested in a one-dimensional theoretical benchmark before being evaluated against measurements and high-resolution predictions in three case studies: a dam-break over a triangular bottom sill, a dam-break through an idealized city and a rainfall-runoff event in an idealized urban catchment. The physical processes could be approximated relatively well with the anisotropic porosity shallow water model. The computational resolution influences the porosities calculated at the cell edges and therefore has a large influence on the quality of the solution. The computational time decreased significantly, on average three orders of magnitude, in comparison to the classical high-resolution shallow water model simulation.Chinese Scholarship Counci

A bronze Kline from Lydia

[No abstract available

SERGHEI (SERGHEI-SWE) v1.0: a performance-portable high-performance parallel-computing shallow-water solver for hydrology and environmental hydraulics

The Simulation EnviRonment for Geomorphology, Hydrodynamics, and Ecohydrology in Integrated form (SERGHEI) is a multi-dimensional, multi-domain, and multi-physics model framework for environmental and landscape simulation, designed with an outlook towards Earth system modelling. At the core of SERGHEI's innovation is its performance-portable high-performance parallel-computing (HPC) implementation, built from scratch on the Kokkos portability layer, allowing SERGHEI to be deployed, in a performance-portable fashion, in graphics processing unit (GPU)-based heterogeneous systems. In this work, we explore combinations of MPI and Kokkos using OpenMP and CUDA backends. In this contribution, we introduce the SERGHEI model framework and present with detail its first operational module for solving shallow-water equations (SERGHEI-SWE) and its HPC implementation. This module is designed to be applicable to hydrological and environmental problems including flooding and runoff generation, with an outlook towards Earth system modelling. Its applicability is demonstrated by testing several well-known benchmarks and large-scale problems, for which SERGHEI-SWE achieves excellent results for the different types of shallow-water problems. Finally, SERGHEI-SWE scalability and performance portability is demonstrated and evaluated on several TOP500 HPC systems, with very good scaling in the range of over 20 000 CPUs and up to 256 state-of-the art GPUs

Improved multislope MUSCL reconstruction on unstructured grids for shallow water equations

In shallow water flow and transport modeling, the monotone upstream-centered scheme for conservation laws (MUSCL) is widely used to extend the original Godunov scheme to second-order accuracy. The most important step in MUSCL-type schemes is the MUSCL reconstruction, which calculate extrapolates the values of independent variables from the cell center to the edge. The monotonicity of the scheme is preserved with the help of slope limiters that prevent the occurrence of new extrema during the reconstruction. On structured grids, the calculation of the slope is straightforward and usually based on a two-point stencil that uses the cell centers of the neighbor cell and the so-called far-neighbor cell of the edge under consideration. On unstructured grids, the correct choice for the upwind slope becomes non-trivial. In this work, two novel TVD schemes are developed based on different techniques for calculating the upwind slope and downwind slope. An additional treatment that stabilizes the scheme is discussed. The proposed techniques are compared to two existing MUSCL reconstruction techniques and a detailed discussion of the results is given. It is shown that the proposed MUSCL reconstruction schemes obtain more accurate results with less numerical diffusion and higher efficiency

Understanding the hydrological response of a headwater-dominated catchment by analysis of distributed surface–subsurface interactions

We computationally explore the relationship between surface–subsurface exchange and hydrological response in a headwater-dominated high elevation, mountainous catchment in East River Watershed, Colorado, USA. In order to isolate the effect of surface–subsurface exchange on the hydrological response, we compare three model variations that differ only in soil permeability. Traditional methods of hydrograph analysis that have been developed for headwater catchments may fail to properly characterize catchments, where catchment response is tightly coupled to headwater inflow. Analyzing the spatially distributed hydrological response of such catchments gives additional information on the catchment functioning. Thus, we compute hydrographs, hydrological indices, and spatio-temporal distributions of hydrological variables. The indices and distributions are then linked to the hydrograph at the outlet of the catchment. Our results show that changes in the surface–subsurface exchange fluxes trigger different flow regimes, connectivity dynamics, and runoff generation mechanisms inside the catchment, and hence, affect the distributed hydrological response. Further, changes in surface–subsurface exchange rates lead to a nonlinear change in the degree of connectivity—quantified through the number of disconnected clusters of ponding water—in the catchment. Although the runoff formation in the catchment changes significantly, these changes do not significantly alter the aggregated streamflow hydrograph. This hints at a crucial gap in our ability to infer catchment function from aggregated signatures. We show that while these changes in distributed hydrological response may not always be observable through aggregated hydrological signatures, they can be quantified through the use of indices of connectivity