Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279

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Environmental Modelling and Software

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsoft

An integrated flood risk assessment approach based on coupled

hydrological-hydraulic modeling and bottom-up hazard
vulnerability analysis
Ke Zhang a, b, c, d, *, Md Halim Shalehy a, c, e, **, Gazi Tawfiq Ezaz a, c, Arup Chakraborty a, c, e,
Kazi Mushfique Mohib f, Linxin Liu a, b
a
State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210098, China
b
Yangtze Institute for Conservation and Development, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210098, China
c
College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210098, PR China
d
CMA-HHU Joint Laboratory for Hydro-Meteorological Studies, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210098, China
e
Bangladesh Water Development Board, Ministry of Water Resources, Bangladesh
f
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Accurately quantifying and assessing the flood risks is critical for flood hazard mitigation and prevention. This
Bottom-up hazard vulnerability study proposed a new integrated flood risk assessment framework to map flood risk, hazard and vulnerability by
Coupled hydrological-hydraulic model coupling the HEC-HMS hydrological model, the HEC-RAS 1D and 2D hydraulic models, and a bottom-up hazard
Flood frequency analysis
vulnerability analysis. The Old Brahmaputra River floodplain of Bangladesh, a flood-prone region, was chosen as
Flood risk assessment
Old Brahmaputra River floodplain
a case study. The coupled hydrological-hydraulic model shows a comparable robust performance in both cali­
bration and validation periods with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient = 0.93 (0.81), coefficient of determi­
nation = 0.95 (0.89), and percent bias = − 1.17% (2.40%) for the calibration (validation) period. Our results
indicate that the assessed risk levels are roughly consistent with the overall property distribution and flood-
hazard potential in the study area. The proposed framework and associated findings are valuable for devel­
oping adaptation strategies and early-warning systems to reduce flood impacts in the future.

1. Introduction
As one of the most common natural disasters around the world, flood
often destroys the physical environment and damages the local economy
and societal well-beings (Liu et al., 2016; Tingsanchali, 2012; Leskens
et al., 2014; Parvin et al., 2016; Petit-Boix et al., 2017; Chao et al., 2019;
Sun et al., 2020). Rapid population growth and land-use/land-cover
change patterns have increased human vulnerability to floods all over
the world (Forzieri et al., 2020; Schwalm et al., 2013; Zang et al., 2021;
Zhang et al., 2021). Floods can lead to mortality, displacement of
community, and damage of crops and infrastructure (Parry et al., 2007;
Doocy et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2022; Zhang et al., 2016; Dolatabadi and
Ahmadzadeh, 2019; Chao et al., 2020). Apparently, flooding is a global
phenomenon; in particular, it has caused devastating consequences in
South Asia, including Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and Nepal (Leskens
et al., 2014; Dewan, 2015; Halgamuge and Nirmalathas, 2017; Khaing
et al., 2019). The great devastating impacts of floods in South Asia and
the other regions requires a deep understanding of the flood risks in
these regions.
Flood risk assessment is a key component of flood risk management
and aims to investigate the high-risk area of flood occurrence (Chen
et al., 2011; Yamanashi et al., 2016; Mojaddadi et al., 2017; Zeleňáková
et al., 2019; Rezende et al., 2020). A comprehensive flood risk assess­
ment requires a wide range of analyses such as technical, cost, problem,
policy, and loss analyses (Chen et al., 2011). Hence, comprehensive
flood risk analysis by detecting hazardous and risky areas is an essential
part of estimating the extent of damages due to flooding (Meyer et al.,
2009; Mojaddadi et al., 2017; Chan et al., 2018; Basturk et al., 2021).
Developing accurate flood risk assessment techniques and improving
our knowledge of flood vulnerability can assist law-makers and

* Corresponding author. State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210098, China.
** Corresponding author. State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210098, China.
E-mail addresses: kzhang@hhu.edu.cn (K. Zhang), halim.shalehy707@gmail.com (M.H. Shalehy).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2021.105279
Received 5 August 2021; Received in revised form 13 November 2021; Accepted 7 December 2021
Available online 16 December 2021
1364-8152/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
K. Zhang et al.
Fig. 1. (a) Geographical locations of the OBR Watershed, the administrative regions (Upazilas) within or around OBR, and hydrological stations, and (b) the
components of the OBR Watershed divided by the administrative regions.
decision-makers to minimize damages and mortalities (Nasiri et al.,
2016; Badakhshan et al., 2019). As a result, flood risk assessment serves
as an important tool for mitigation and prevention of the flood disasters.
Recently, remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system
(GIS) technologies have been used for flood prediction, preparation,
prevention, and risk assessment around the world (Tehrany et al., 2013;
Zhang et al., 2019). Most studies applied hydrologic and hydraulic
models to simulate flood runoff and runoff in low-lying and flood-prone
areas (Anselmo et al., 1996; Smithers et al., 1997; Booij, 2005; Mon­
tanari et al., 2013; Ahmadisharaf and Kalyanapu, 2019; Nogherotto
et al., 2019). Besides, flood risk can also be assessed with multi-criteria
analysis of inundation depth generated by hydraulic and hydrologic
models such as the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and multi-attribute
utility theory (MAUT) methods (Zhang et al., 2002; Meyer et al., 2009;
Chen et al., 2011). Recently, Ahmadisharaf and Kalyanapu (2019)
applied coupled a semi-distributed hydrologic model and a 2D unsteady
hydraulic model to estimate the uncertainty of flood loss in the Swan­
nanoa River watershed, North Carolina, United States. Besides, Ahma­
disharaf et al. (2018) represented a generic probabilistic framework that
couples a hydrological model with an unsteady hydraulic model to es­
timate the uncertainty of flood characteristics. Moreover, new advances
in the RS and GIS provide new data and ways to improve the simulation
accuracy of the coupled hydrological-hydraulic modeling (Grimaldi
et al., 2016, 2018). Therefore, the coupled hydrological-hydraulic
modeling equipped with the RS and GIS provides us a new tool to
conduct the flood risk assessment.
Application of the HEC-RAS model is gaining popularity for flood
routing and flood level forecasting due to its capability to route simple
open water floods and produce water level forecasts simultaneously
(Hicks and Peacock, 2005). The HEC-HMS model is recently applied for
analyzing flood frequency and flood warning system (Oleyiblo and Li,
2010; Halwatura and Najim, 2013). Further, researchers have also
started to use the coupled hydrological-hydraulic model for future flood
plain mapping as well as risk assessment in different parts of the world
(Van Nguyen et al., 2016; Thakur et al., 2017; van Popering-Verkerk and
van Buuren, 2017; Ahmadisharaf et al., 2018; Abdessamed and Abder­
razak, 2019; Blöschl et al., 2019; Cowles et al., 2019). Clearly, the
coupled hydrological-hydraulic modeling also plays an important role
on flood risk assessment.
The ever increasing population, ill-planned infrastructural develop­
ment, and massive flood control interventions in a floodplain environ­
ment have led to flood disasters becoming more extensive and frequent
in recent years (Rahman and Salehin, 2013; Ahmadzadeh and
2
Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279
Dolatabadi, 2018; Dolatabadi et al., 2020). Flood occurs every year in
Bangladesh with the recorded most devastating floods in 1974, 1984,
1988, 1998, 2004, 2007, 2015, 2016 and 2017, which caused severe
damages to people and properties (Dewan, 2013; Biswas et al., 2018;
Adnan et al., 2019). Old Brahmaputra River (OBR) is a left-bank dis­
tributary of the Brahmaputra River, and the off-take of OBR is at
Bahadurabad point. Causes of flood risks in the OBR basin include
geographic location, geological and geomorphological formation, and
excessive rainfall during the monsoon, and river siltation. The
decreasing trend of the average annual discharge and gradual silting at
the mouth of OBR is obstructing smooth flow from the Brahmaputra to
downstream reaches (Ali, 2010; Noor, 2013; Hossain and Meng, 2020).
Additionally, rapid urbanization of the flood plain has also contributed
to the increased magnitude and frequency of floods in recent years. The
dramatic change of land use reduces soil water storage capacity and
increases direct surface runoff that can easily form flooding. Considering
the above-discussed factors, coupling hydrological model, hydraulic
model, and risk assessment model for flood risk assessment can provide
early warning and support the development of flood prevention system
to relief the impacts of possible flood events in the old Brahmaputra
River Watershed (Tehrany et al., 2013).
Many studies have been devoted to identifying the prime causes and
impacts of floods in Bangladesh (Tingsanchali and Karim, 2005; Carrel
et al., 2010; Bhuiyan and Dutta, 2012; Haque and Jahan, 2015). How­
ever, flood risk assessment using the coupled hydrological-hydraulic
modeling is still unavailable in the OBR basin area of Bangladesh. Be­
sides, a vulnerability analysis by Bottom-up hazard in this region could
provide guidelines to the decision-makers to estimate the damages
caused by floods each year. This study aims (a) to carry out a flood
frequency analysis of the flood discharge data using selected probability
distributions models (Log-Normal, Log-Pearson Type III and Gumbel),
(b) to assess flood risk using feature class normalization, and (c) to
prepare risk map using GIS-based coupled hydrologic-hydraulic (i.e., the
Hydrologic Engineering Center-Hydrologic Modeling System
(HEC-HMS) hydrological model and the Hydrologic Engineering
Center-River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) 1D and 2D hydraulic models)
modeling system. This study provides an integrated framework to assess
the flood risk and hazard vulnerability analysis in the OBR floodplain
region of Bangladesh.
The structure of our study is as follows: Section 2 describes the study
area and various datasets; Section 3 introduces the developed method­
ological framework, including the flood frequency analysis, the coupled
hydrological-hydraulic modeling system, analysis methods for flood
K. Zhang et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279

Table 1 of the study area has a length of 138 km, located in northeastern parts of
Summary of datasets used for this study. Bangladesh (Fig. 1(a)) and spans three districts of the Mymensingh Di­
Data Type Data Source Location Period vision, i.e., Mymensingh, Jamalpur, and Sherpur, that are further
composed of 13 upazilas (Fig. 1(b)); upazila is a small administrative
Digital Shuttle Radar Bangladesh 2014
Elevation Topography Mission region or known as a sub-district in Bangladesh. OBR originates from the
Model (SRTM) left bank of the Brahmaputra River to the north of Bahadurabad and
(DEM) meets with the Meghna River at Bhairab Bazar. The width of OBR is
Cross-section Bangladesh Water Old Brahmaputra 2005 around 200 m with channel sinuosity of 1.24. Average bed slope of OBR
Bathymetry Development Board River
(BWDB)
is 6 cm/km, expanding to 5–6 m in breadth in many places. The common
Discharge Bangladesh Water Mymensingh 1988–2017 land use types in this region include agriculture land, fallow land, and
Development Board Sadar (instantaneous vegetation. As a distributary of the Brahmaputra River, OBR suffers
(BWDB) Bahadurabad data) seasonal riverine floods. The Jinjirum River, a tributary of OBR, flows
transit 2003–2017 (daily
from the Indo-Bangladesh border and acts as the primary source of dry
data)
Land use and Oak Ridge National Bangladesh 2015 season flow of OBR.
land cover Laboratory (ORNL), Precipitation has a strong seasonality in this watershed. Four
European Space prominent seasons are recognized in Bangladesh, i.e., pre-monsoon
Agency (ESA) (March to May), monsoon or rainy monsoon (June to September),
Water level Bangladesh Water Jamalpur, 1988–2017
Development Board Mymensingh
post-monsoon (October and November), and dry winter season
(BWDB) (December to February) (Ahasan et al., 2010; Mullick et al., 2019). In
Rainfall Bangladesh Mymensingh 2003–2017 Bangladesh, floods frequently occur in the monsoon season, while oc­
Meteorological Region casionally excessive rainfall during the pre-monsoon season may also
Department (BMD)
cause flash floods. Inhabitants in this region are mainly dependent on
Pan Bangladesh Mymensingh 2003–2007
evaporation Meteorological Region conventional agricultural production and primarily live along the
Department (BMD) riverbank, increasing the risk of flooding.
Socio- Bangladesh Bureau Jamalpur, 2011 (population),
economic of Statistics (BBS) Sherpur, and 2008 (agriculture), 2.2. Data
indicators Mymensingh 2011 (district
reports)
Precipitation data used in this study were collected from the
Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) (http://datalibrary.bmd.
gov.bd/). Discharge and water level data of 30 years (1988–2017) were
collected from the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB)
(https://www.bwdb.gov.bd/en/). In Bangladesh, discharge data are
usually measured at daily, bi-weekly or monthly interval. The historical
record shows that streamflow at the OBR outlet is decreasing during the
recent years and maximum discharge is around 4290 m3/s that was
recorded in August of 1988. The river bathymetry data at 20 cross-
sections of the OBR were measured in 2005 by BWDB. The Digital
Elevation Model (DEM) data were from the Shuttle Radar Topography
Mission (SRTM) data provided by the United States Geological Survey
(USGS) (https://www.usgs.gov/), which are further used to delineate
the river networks, subbasins, and other topographical information.
Global Land Cover Map 2015 with a spatial resolution of 300 m from the
European Space Agency (ESA) (http://maps.elie.ucl.ac.be/CCI/viewer/
download.php) is used to derive the land cover/land use information.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Global Hydrologic Soil Map
(https://daac.ornl.gov) is used to derive the soil information. The
derived land use/land cover map is used to determine the Curve
Numbers (CN) for runoff calculation and hydrological analysis. Further,
relevant population census, social and economic data are collected from
the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) (http://www.bbs.gov.bd/) to
assess the socio-economic vulnerability to flooding in the study area.
The sources and other information of these datasets used in this study
Fig. 2. Flowchart of the developed coupled hydrological-hydraulic modeling are summarized in Table 1.
and flood risk assessment framework.
3. Methodology
risk, hazard and vulnerability, and the calibration and validation stra­
tegies; Section 4 describes the results; Finally, summary of the main The framework to assess the flood risk developed in this study in­
findings and conclusions are given in Section 5. volves several major procedures: pre-process of basic data such as hy­
drometeorology, land use/land cover, and DEM data, watershed
2. Study area and data delineation, flood frequency analysis, hydrological-hydraulic modeling,
flood hazard and risk assessment (Fig. 2). Hydrometeorological data
2.1. Study area such as precipitation, discharge, and water level are directly used for
hydrological modeling and flood frequency analysis. Flood frequency
The study area, namely, the Old Brahmaputra River (OBR) Water­ analysis uses a long-term record of streamflow data to compute the flood
shed, geographically ranges between 24◦ 21′ 6"- 25◦ 40′ 9"N in latitude frequencies of historical flood events and determine a typical flood event
and between 89◦ 45′ 30"- 90◦ 30′ 10"E in longitude. The river main branch for further modeling and risk assessment. The coupled HEC-HMS and

3
K. Zhang et al.
HEC-RAS 1D-2D modeling simulate the hydrological processes and
inundation of the selected typical flood event. The outputs of the
coupled HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS 1D-2D model, such as flood depth,
flood velocity, inundated area, and other socio-economic data, including
population density, educational status, economic conditions, and
housing and infrastructure, are used as input for the flood hazard-
vulnerability and risk assessment analysis (Fig. 2).
In this advanced integrated method, we coupled the United States
Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) HEC-HMS Version 4.3 (https://www.
hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-hms) with the USACE HEC-RAS
Version 5.0.3 (https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-ras) to
do the simulation of the hydrological and hydraulic processes. The HEC-
RAS model is a hydraulic model/software that models the 1-dimensional
(1D) and 2-dimensional (2D) hydraulics of water flow through natural
rivers and other channels. The relevant outputs of the HEC-HMS and
HEC-RAS coupled system are then used as inputs of the Bottom-up
Hazard-Vulnerability analysis to quantify flood risk and its components.
3.1. Flood frequency analysis
In this study, the purpose of the flood frequency analysis is to
determine the return period/exceedance probability of the historical
typical flood events, so that we can conduct flood risk assessment based
on the typical flood events. To this end, three flood frequency proba­
bility distributions, including the log-normal (LN2), log-Pearson Type III
(LP3), and Gumbel (GEV) distributions, were adopted to fit the
streamflow data. Flood frequency analysis was conducted using annual
maximum series of discharges data of 30 years (1988–2017). The
observed annual maximum streamflow discharge for each year of the
observation period is selected from a discharge time series to derive
flood events’ recurrence intervals. The recurrence intervals TR of a given
streamflow discharge in the time series is obtained using the Weibull
formula (Chow et al., 1988; Ehiorobo and Izinyon, 2013):
n+1
TR = (1)
m
where n is the number of years of the observation period, and m is the
rank of this given streamflow discharge, which is obtained by arranging
the data series in the descending order and assigning the highest value
with a rank of 1 and the lowest value with a rank of n.
The corresponding design discharge (QT ) of a given recurrence in­
terval (T) can be computed by Equation (2) (Ghosh and Guchhait, 2016):
QT = Q + K σ (2)
where Q is the mean of the discharge data, K is the frequency factor
corresponding to each return period, and σ is the standard deviation for
the discharge data that is calculated as:
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
∑
(Q − Q)2
σ= (3)
n− 1
3.2. Coupled hydrological-hydraulic modeling
HEC-RAS hydraulic model (version 5.0.3) was set up as a coupled
1D-2D model, in which river flow was modeled in one dimension, and
floodplain flow was modeled in two dimensions. To couple the HEC-RAS
with HEC-HMS, we first used the ArcGIS tool HEC-GeoHMS to derive the
hydrological physical conditions such as the main river channels and the
delineation of the associated sub-basin. Then, the HEC-HMS hydrologic
model is applied to simulate the outflows of all subbasins, which serve as
the inflows and boundary conditions for the main river channels, and the
lateral flows of the main river channels. In addtion, the water level data
at the Mymensingh station (Fig. 1) serve as the input downstream
boundary condition in the HEC-RAS model for this study. The pre­
processing needed by the HEC-RAS simulation was conducted using the
4
Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279
HEC-GeoRAS software and ArcGIS. The monsoon seasons (June–Sep­
tember) of 2004 were selected as calibration periods and the monsoon
season of 2007 as validation periods.
In this study, the HEC-GeoHMS and ArcGIS platforms were used to
process the DEM to derive the topographic, land surface, river network,
and geographical data required by the HEC-HMS model. The Soil Con­
servation Service (SCS) Curve Number (CN), unit hydrograph, and
Muskingum routing methods were selected for computing runoff gen­
eration, hill-slope flow concentration, and channel routing, respectively.
To verify the reliability and robustness of the HEC-HMS model, we
further divided the simulation periods (2003–2017) into the calibration
(2003–2006) and validation (2014–2017) periods. The input data for
the HEC-HMS model include the 3-hourly rainfall data and monthly
evapotranspiration data.
To evaluate the capability of the model, a set of commonly used
goodness of fit indicator, i.e., the coefficient of determination (R2 ), the
Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), and the percentage of deviation from
observed streamflow (PBIAS) were calculated. The R2 metric is an in­
dicator of the strength of the relationship between the observed and
simulated values. When the R2 value is close to 0 or the NSE value is less
than or close to 0, the model prediction is considered unacceptable. The
value of R2 can be calculated by Equation (4):
[∑n ( o )( )]2
Q − Qo Qsi − Qs
R2 = ∑n ( i i ) ∑n ( s ) (4)
o o 2 s 2
i Qi − Q i Qi − Q
where Qoi is the ith observed value, Qsi is the corresponding ith simulated
value, Qo is the mean of observed data, Qs is the mean of the simulated
data, and n is the total number of observations. The Nash-Sutcliffe ef­
ficiency (NSE) value can be calculated by Equation (5):
∑n ( s )2
Q − Qs
NSE = 1 − ∑ni=1( i )2 (5)
o o
i=1 Qi − Q
The NSE value ranges from - ∞ to 1, with NSE = 1 as the most op­
timum value. The optimal value of Percent bias (PBIAS) is 0.0, with low-
magnitude values indicating accurate model simulation. Positive values
indicate underestimation by model, while negative values indicate
overestimation by model (Gupta et al., 1999). The value of PBIAS can be
calculated by Equation (6):
∑n ( o )
Q − Qs ∗100
PBIAS = i=1 ∑ni ( oi) (6)
i=1 Qi
where PBIAS is the deviation of data being evaluated, expressed as a
percentage.
3.3. Flood risk, hazard and vulnerability analysis
The total risk of flood (Riski ) with a two-dimensional index (i.e.,
hazard and vulnerability) to a given location (i) is assessed by Equations
(7) and (8):
Riski = Hi × Vi (7)
∫
Vi = (E, I) (8)
where Hi is the hazard index and Vi is the vulnerability index at location
i, which is the combination of multiple socio-economic exposure in­
dicators (E) and impact indicators (I) by following Jahan (2018) and
Rahman (2019).
For the bottom-up hazard-vulnerability analysis, the hazard value of
each administrative region (upazila) was evaluated according to
geographic coverage of flood, percentage of inundation area, and
propagation flow velocity. Vulnerability was evaluated considering
population-based eight different indicators (Table 2) based on Rahman
K. Zhang et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279

Table 2
Description of the parameters, indicators, and weights for vulnerability assess­
ment used in this study.
Parameters Weights Indicators Weights

Population 0.120 Number of social dependency 0.470

Disable population 0.430
Population <10 years old or >59 0.100
years old
Population density 0.045 Population density per km2 1.000
Education 0.130 Illiterate population 1.000
Gender 0.105 Female to male ratio 1.000
Housing and 0.110 Number of urban households 0.330
infrastructure Number of rural households 0.670
Economy 0.160 Unemployed population 1.000
Livelihood 0.165 Number of people engaged in 0.358 Fig. 5. Comparison of the observed and simulated water level by the coupled
household work HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS 1D-2D hydrological-hydraulic model at the Jamalpur
Number of people engaged in 0.328 station of OBR during the (a) calibration and (b) validation periods.
agricultural work
Number of people engaged service 0.314
and industry
Table 3
Land use 0.165 Area of rice paddies 1.000
Summary of the performance of the HEC-HMS model under different calibration
strategies in the Old Brahmaputra River Watershed.
Optimization strategies Statistical metricsa

NSE R2

Calibration Validation Calibration Validation

Upstream to downstream 0.797 0.669 0.806 0.709

Downstream to upstream 0.798 0.674 0.805 0.707
Random 0.795 0.665 0.805 0.708
a
NSE is the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency and R2 indicates the coefficient of
determination.

Table 4
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the 5x5 conversion matrix from hazard and Summary of frequency analysis of discharge fitted by different distributions (log-
vulnerability to risk level. Pearson type III, log-normal, and Gumbel).
Return Log- Log- Gumbel % Deviation % Deviation
Period TR Pearson normal (GEV) of LN2 from of LP3 form
(Years) Type-III (LN2) GEV GEV
(LP3)

2 1,840.43 1810.45 1,729.88 4.66 6.39

5 2,586.59 2576.53 2,443.60 5.44 5.85
10 3,062.31 3098.42 2,916.15 6.25 5.01
20 3,504.27 3608.22 3,369.42 7.09 4.00
50 4,058.45 4282.99 3,956.14 8.26 2.59
100 4,463.02 4801.57 4,395.81 9.23 1.53
200 4,858.92 5331.02 4,833.87 10.28 0.52
500 5,372.57 6051.48 5,411.80 11.82 − 0.72

with Hj ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} , Vj ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}, 1 ≤ j ≤ 13, and

Fig. 4. Comparison of the observed and simulated streamflow by the coupled
HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS 1D-2D hydrological-hydraulic model at the outlet
(Mymensingh) of the OBR Watershed during the (a) calibration and (b) vali­
dation periods.
(2019) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) recommended by
Jahan (2018). Risk assessment was calculated based on the degree of
exposure to floods and the possibility of floods occurring in the study
area. The risk was evaluated by four risk levels based on the criteria set
by the Project Risk Manager (PRM) using the 5-by-5 risk matrix evalu­
ation method (Fig. 3) following Ryu et al. (2017). The scores of hazard
(H) and vulnerability (V) are ranked from 1 to 5 according to the criteria
proposed by Jahan (2018); thus, the multiplied value of hazard and
vulnerability ranges between 1 and 25. The value of RiskOBRj level was
derived for the thirteen Upazila (as denoted by j) under the districts of
Mymensingh, Jamalpur, and Sherpur of the study area using Equation
(9):
RiskOBR j = Hj * Vj
RiskOBR j ∈ {Safe, Moderate, Major, Severe}.
In this study, three indicators were used to quantify the flood hazard,
i.e., flood depth, percentage of inundation area, and flow velocity. To
calculate the hazard index (H), its indicators need to be standardized,
considering that different indicators have different units and magni­
tudes. The hazard and vulnerability scores are calculated as a weighted
mean of their respective indicators and then normalized for hazard and
vulnerability analysis to bring all values into the range [a, b] or [1,100].
Equation (10) is used to achieve the normalization process:
[ ]
(Xi − Xmin )
X = a + (b − a) * (10)
(Xmax − Xmin )
1 ≤ Normalized X ≤ 100,
where Xi is the original value, Xmin is the minimum value, and Xmax is the
maximum value of normalization. After deriving the normalized values
of the indicators and corresponding weights, hazard and vulnerability
(9) score at the upazila level can be calculated using Equation (11):

5
K. Zhang et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279

Fig. 6. Map of the predicted inundated extent across the OBR Watershed.

Dj = Wj1 × Di1 + Wj2 × Di2 + Wj3 × Di3 + ……Wjn × Din (11)
where Dj is hazard or vulnerability of an individual upazila, Di1 to Din is
the hazard or vulnerability indicator for an upazila (j), and W is the
corresponding weight assigned to the individual indicator of that upa­
zila (j).
that the calibrated parameter values of the upperstream subbasins rely
on the calibration results of the downstream subbasins. The third
strategy will make the calibration dependency in a random order.
However, if all of the three strategies can lead to a similar preformance,
it will prove that the model calibration is location-independent.
4. Results and discussions

3.4. Calibration and validation strategies of coupled model

4.1. Results of calibration and validation

In this study, the HEC-HMS model was run for a warming-up period
The rainfall-runoff HEC-HMS model was calibrated and validated
of six months prior the continuous simulation to limit the impacts of
using the observed discharge at the Mymensingh and Jamalpur stations
uncertainty in the manually assigned initial conditions. The HEC-HMS
of the OBR Watershed. The coupled hydrological-hydraulic model was
model was calibrated and validated using three different calibration
calibrated for 2004 and validated for 2007 for both of these stations. As
strategies. We chose the three different strategies to assess whether the
shown in Fig. 4, the simulated flows agree well with the observed values
optimized model parameters are location-dependent and to avoid the
for both calibration and validation periods at the Mymensingh outlet.
selection of the localized parameter values. The first strategy is to cali­
Similarly, the simulated water level at the Jamalpur point also matches
brate the model parameters subbasin-wise from upstream to down­
very well with the observations during both calibration and validation
stream. The second strategy is to calibrate the model parameters
periods (Fig. 5).
subbasin-wise from downstream to upstream. The third strategy is to
As mentioned above, the HEC-HMS model was calibrated using three
calibrate the model parameters subbasin-wise using a random order. In
calibration strategies. First, model shows trivial difference between the
theory, the first strategy will cause that the calibrated parameter values
results using the three calibration strategies indicated by the close NSE
of the downstream subbasins are dependent on the calibrated values of
values (0.795–0.798 and 0.665–0.674 for calibration and validation,
the upperstream subbasins. In constrast, the second strategy will lead to

6
K. Zhang et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279

respectively) and R2 values (0.805–0.806 and 0.707–0.709 for calibra­

tion and validation, respectively) (Table 3). Second, the model perfor­
mance in the validation is generally similar to that in the calibration but
is slightly downgraded (0.665–0.674 (validation) vs. 0.795–0.798
(calibration) and 0.707–0.709 (validation) vs. 0.805–0.806 (calibration)
for the NSE and R2 metrics, respectively) (Table 3). The above results
indicate that the HEC-HMS model is well optimized in this study and
that the HEC-HMS model is overall reliable and robust for flood simu­
lation in this study area.

4.2. Flood frequency analysis results

Frequency analysis gives the probability of flood occurrences based

Fig. 7. Maps of (a) hazard, (b) vulnerability, and (c) risk levels of the OBR
Watershed for flood.
on the annual maximum series of discharges of the OBR for several re­
turn periods (2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, and 500 years flood). As shown
in Table 4, the percentage deviation of LN2 distribution based values
from the GEV distribution based values ranges from 11.82% at TR = 500
years to 4.66% at TR = 2 years, indicating that the fitted results based on
these two distributions are very close to each other. Apart from this at 2-
year return period, both the LP3 and LN distributions predicted higher
discharge values than the GEV distribution (Table 4). Our analysis
suggests that Log-Normal distribution is more suitable for the design of
flood control structures as the design of these structures requires larger
return periods to mitigate against the effect of floods for a long period
and save the cost of rebuilding the event of failures. The percentage
deviations of the LP distribution from the GEV distribution are generally
small and range from 6.39% at 2 years to − 0.72% at 500 years (Table 4).
For the high-frequency periods (up to 5 years), the LN distribution based
values are higher than the GEV results. This implies that if a lower design
value is required for up to 5 years, LN2 is suitable but not economical.
The results show that the LN2 distribution appears to be the most
appropriate flood frequency distribution for this region due to the
largest discharge values among the three distributions tested on the
sample data and the most consistent with the return periods. More
important, the log-normal distribution has a better goodness-of-fit (R2 =
0.94) than the LP3 (R2 = 0.92) and GEV (R2 = 0.90) distributions.
Similar to our findings, Alam et al. (2018) also identified that the LN2
distribution provided the best fitted results for northeastern region of
Bangladesh, which is close to our study area. Therefore, we adopted the
LN2 distribution for the computation of flood return periods in this study
to militate against the effect of floods for an extended period and save
the cost of rebuilding in the event of failures.
Our study provides an inundation map based on the 2004 flood
event, as it is one of the most devastating floods in the history of
Bangladesh. The floods of 2004 lasted from July to September and
covered 50% of the country of their peak. Besides, the rainfall totals of
over 300 mm in just seven days resulted in extensive flooding across the
country, notably in the northeast region (www.coolgeography.co.uk).
Fig. 6 shows the map of flood inundation based on the 2004 flood event
with a recurrence interval of 15.50 years. The results show that a total
area of 757.90 km2 (about 58.42% of the total area) is at risk of flooding.
The upstream regions such as Dewanganj, Baksiganj, and Sreebardi have
a relatively low flood depth ranging from 0.30 m to 0.90 m (Fig. 4),
whereas downstream areas of the OBR face high inundation varying
between 1.80 m and 3.60 m (Fig. 4). These areas with high flood depths
are also the highly populated areas such as Jamalpur Sadar and
Mymensingh Sadar, making them under the highest inundation risk
among the thirteen upazilas. This analysis agrees with the flood sus­
ceptibility map drawn by recent peer studies in Bangladesh (Adnan
et al., 2019; Uddin et al., 2019; Uddin and Matin, 2021). Specifically,
Uddin and Matin (2021) observed that northeastern parts of Bangladesh
including the greater Mymensingh and Sylhet divisions were inundated
to the maximum extent during the recent monsoonal flood of 2020.
It is worth of noting that analysis of flood events may involve mul­
tiple variables such as flood peak discharge, flood volume, and flood
water level (Brunner et al., 2016; Uddin and Matin, 2021), although

7
K. Zhang et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279

Table 5
Summary of the scores and ranks of hazard and vulnerability, the risk value, and the risk level of different upazila within the Old Brahmaputra River Watershed.
Upazila Name Hazard Score Vulnerability Score Hazard Rank Vulnerab. Rank Risk Risk Level

Baksiganj 64.88 23.23 4 2 8 2

Dewanganj 12.83 23.19 1 2 2 1
Islampur 63.21 23.62 4 2 8 2
Jamalpur S. 63.49 64.92 4 4 16 3
Melandaha 28.02 29.69 2 2 4 2
Nakla 50.45 30.59 3 2 6 2
Sherpur S. 51.85 42.35 3 3 9 2
Sreebardi 13.96 24.07 1 2 2 1
Gauripur 69.87 37.82 4 2 8 2
Ishwarganj 88.57 38.22 5 2 10 3
Muktagachha 25.94 33.75 2 2 4 2
Mymensingh S. 75.02 60.98 4 4 16 3
Phulpur 20.41 65.18 2 4 8 2

Fig. 8. Risk Map of the OBR Watershed.

univariate probability distribution functions are usually used to estimate
the occurrence probability or magnitude of the flood peak or volume in a
particular region in flood frequency analysis (Zhang et al., 2018). To
more accurately estimate the probability of flooding, one needs to know
not only the high and extreme values of each variable but also the
likelihood of their coinciding (Brunner et al., 2017). The main issue of
the univariate models is their difficulties in capturing the underlying
joint probability among multiple physical processes, which will lead to
underestimation of the associated occurring probability (Fiorentino
et al., 2011; Brunner et al., 2016).
4.3. Risk and hazard analysis
Based on our flood risk assessment, we derived the maps of hazard

8
K. Zhang et al.
score, vulnerability score, and risk level for the whole region (Fig. 7).
Similar to the spatial pattern of the simulated inundation map (Fig. 6),
the hazard level generally increases from the upstream (northwest) to
the downstream (southeast) (Fig. 7(a)). The upazilas with higher hazard
levels are generally located in the lowland areas and along the OBR
River (Fig. 7(a)). For the vulnerability, the upazilas that are most
vulnerable to floods are also located in the downstream areas (Fig. 7(b)).
These observations are in good agreement with a previous study by Gain
et al. (2013), which also found that the lower part of the Brahmaputra
river has a high flood vulnerability. This spatial pattern of hazard and
vulnerability analyses is mainly related with the spatial distributions of
population, economy, livelihood, and land use.
Regarding the resultant flood risk, no upazila in the study area is
under severe risky conditions with respect to the 2004 flood event (Fig. 7
(c)). The upazilas with the highest risks are Jamalpur S, Mymensingh S,
and Ishwarganj (Fig. 7(c) and Table 5). Although the three upazilas have
a similar level of risk, they have different compositions of hazard and
vulnerability scores. For example, Ishwarganj upazila has a low
vulnerability to flood but has a very high hazard score (Table 5 and
Fig. 8). In contrast, Phulpur is highly vulnerable to flood but has a very
low flood danger (Table 5 and Fig. 8). Among the thirteen upazila
alongside the OBR, Jamalpur Sadar and Mymensingh Sadar are the most
risky to floods with a risk level of 3. This study also predicts that Sherpur
Sadar falls under the upper limit of moderate risk condition (i.e., level 2)
due to the medium level of hazard and vulnerability. On the other hand,
Dewanganj and Sreebardi are relatively safe and classified as regions
with a risk level of 1, since the two upazilas have both low levels of flood
danger and vulnerability (Fig. 8 and Table 5). The remaining seven
upazilas face a relatively moderate risk condition (i.e., risk level of 2).
Details of the hazard score and rank, vulnerability score and rank, and
risk level of the OBR upazilas are summarized in Table 5.
Based on the flood risk map, corresponding to the 2004 flood event,
with flood depth and risk level overlapping the buildings, communities,
and infrastructures (Fig. 8), our results show that 46.48% of the study
area will be inundated if flood depth is greater than 0.30 m and less than
3.60 m. As a result, many important places and points at risk, including
approximately 55,609 built-ups such as residential buildings, factories,
hospitals, and markets, 46 dwellings such as villages and towns, and 144
important locations such as educational institutes, cyclone shelters, and
other infrastructures. This study also shows that the population of major
cities and municipalities is much higher than that of the highland area,
which makes these area most vulnerable and at the highest risk (Fig. 8).
The above results are also supported by the previous studies by Bhuiyan
and Al Baky (2014) and Adnan et al. (2019) in the context of flood
susceptibility zoning, mapping of flood hazard and vulnerability in
Bangladesh. Our results clear implicate that further urban planning in
this region or any other region should pay more attention to the po­
tential flood hazard risk to achieve a sustainable urban planning,
although availability of natural resources and transportation conve­
nience are key limiting factors for the urban planning.
Finally, there are a couple of uncertainties in this study, which need
be pointed out. First, we only applied the univariate probability distri­
bution function to fit the discharge series rather than a bivariate or
multivariate approach. As a result, the derived flood return period may
be underestimated. Second, uncertainty in the input data such as pre­
cipitation, model parameters, and model structure may also introduce
uncertain in the resultant hazard maps. Despite these uncertainties, our
study has shown reasonablly well results and is supported by the other
independent relevant studies. More importantly, our proposed frame­
work could be easily applied to the other regions, especially in the data-
scarce areas, because this framework provides a comprehensive
methods and tools to conduct the necessary analyses for flood risk
assessment and can be easily implemented using the public-available
data such as the long-term satellite-observed rainfall data.
9
Environmental Modelling and Software 148 (2022) 105279
5. Conclusions
This study provides a framework for assessing flood risk based on the
coupled hydrological-hydraulic modeling and bottom-up hazard-
vulnerability analysis for the Old Brahmaputra River Watershed. Our
study finds that most of the flooding areas have a water depth greater
than 0.30 m (Figs. 6 and 8). The area under cultivation has a flood depth
of more than 3.6 m, implying a significant impact on agriculture due to
the flooding and livelihood (Fig. 8). Approximately 46.48% of this re­
gion will be under hazardous conditions given a flood event with a
recurrence interval of 15.50 years. Our results also indicate that the
estimation of flood discharges from the log-normal distribution is more
reliable for the design and operation of vital infrastructures, flood risk
management, and flood hazard mapping. Besides, the computed risk
levels were reasonably consistent with the overall property distribution
and flood-hazard potential in the study area. The findings of this study
are in good agreement with previous studies but provide a better un­
derstanding about the integrated flood risk and vulnerability assess­
ment. The outcomes of this study would help minimize the impacts of
flooding and assist in an early warning of future flooding in the context
of Bangladesh. The developed coupling strategy also provides a valuable
tool for flood mapping and risk assessment in the South Asian regions.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Ke Zhang: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Soft­
ware, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing,
Funding acquisition. Md Halim Shalehy: Data curation, Investigation,
Software, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review &
editing, Visualization. Gazi Tawfiq Ezaz: Data curation, Investigation,
Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Arup Chak­
raborty: Data curation, Visualization. Kazi Mushfique Mohib: Data
curation, Visualization. Linxin Liu: Data curation, Visualization.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Founda­
tion of China (51879067), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu
Province (BK20180022), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities in China (B200204038), Hydraulic Science and Technology
Plan Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2019slkj-B1), Hydraulic Science
and Technology Plan Foundation of Jiangsu Province (2018055), and
Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province (NY-004).
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