Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984

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Journal of Hydrology
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Research papers

Urban flood prediction under heavy precipitation T

a,⁎ b b a
Xiuquan Wang , Gary Kinsland , Durga Poudel , Adam Fenech
a
School of Climate Change and Adaptation, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island C1A 4P3, Canada
b
School of Geosciences, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

This manuscript was handled by Marco Borga, Increasing city resilience to floods under climate change has become one of the major challenges for decision
Editor-in-Chief, with the assistance of Alessio makers, urban planners, and engineering practitioners around the world. Accurate prediction of urban floods
Domeneghetti, Associate Editor under heavy precipitation is critically important to address such a challenge as it can help understand the
Keywords: vulnerability of a city to future climate change and simulate the effectiveness of various sustainable engineering
Urban flood prediction techniques in reducing urban flooding risks in real urban settings. Here, we propose a new model for urban flood
Climate change prediction under heavy precipitation. The model divides an irregular urban area into many grid cells with no
Heavy precipitation limitation on the spatial resolution as long as the DEM data of the same resolution are available. It is capable of
Reverse flow
reflecting the frequent inflow or outflow interactions among grid cells and capturing the rapid generation of
Flooding risk
surface runoff in urban areas during heavy rainfall. The model also accounts for typical characteristics of urban
Flood map
Urban resilience areas, such as large-scale impermeable surfaces and urban drainage systems, in order to simulate urban floods
more realistically. In addition, the model uses both surface elevation and instantaneous surface water depth of
all grid cells to dynamically determine the directions of horizontal inflow and outflow during each time step of
model simulation. This enables the model to capture the reverse-flow phenomenon which is commonly seen in
flat urban areas during heavy storms. By applying the proposed model for reproducing the 2016 flood in
Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, we demonstrate its effectiveness in predicting real-world flood events.

1. Introduction Ontario’s history, respectively; the insurance damages resulted from

As a consequence of global warming, the hydrological cycle has
been amplified in the form of more frequent and intense precipitation
events (Allan and Soden, 2008; Held and Soden, 2006; Wang et al.,
2014). This becomes a serious challenge for most of the urban areas
around the world where unprecedented flooding events due to heavy
precipitation have been more frequently observed in recent years
(Garner et al., 2017; Jha et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2016; Wilby and
Keenan, 2012). For example, the 2016 Louisiana flood was caused by a
severe weather system which brought prolonged rainfall in about 72 h
to the southern parts of Louisiana resulting in widespread and cata-
strophic flooding. This flood damaged more than 140,000 houses, re-
quired evacuation of more than 20,000 people, and led to at least 13
deaths and $10 billion monetary losses (NOAA, 2016; Vahedifard et al.,
2016; Watson et al., 2017). It has been regarded as an historic and
unprecedented flood event in Louisiana and one of the worst natural
disasters in United States. Severe floods have also frequently struck
several major cities in Canada in recent years and caused billions of
dollars in damage. Particularly, the 2013 floods in Calgary and Toronto
have been recorded as the largest natural disasters in Alberta’s and
these two events have constituted the first and third largest natural
insured catastrophes in Canadian History (Tanner and Arvai, 2018;
Thistlethwaite and Henstra, 2017; Wang et al., 2014). Recent studies
suggest that future global warming will lead to significant changes in
the intensity and frequency of precipitation extremes, which are very
likely to be associated with higher risks of urban flooding (Alfieri et al.,
2016; Schiermeier, 2011; Wang et al., 2015). Hence, how to increase
city resilience to floods under climate change has now become one of
the major challenges for decision makers, urban planners, and en-
gineering practitioners around the world (Hammond et al., 2015; Kim
et al., 2017).
Accurate prediction of urban flooding under heavy precipitation is
critically important to address such a challenge because it can help
understand the vulnerability of a city to future climate change from a
long-term perspective and simulate the effectiveness of various sus-
tainable engineering techniques in reducing urban flooding risks in a
real urban setting (Jha et al., 2012). Although most of conventional
hydrological models perform generally well in simulating surface run-
offs or river streamflow in natural watersheds, they are unable to ac-
curately simulate urban flooding because of the following reasons: (1)

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: xxwang@upei.ca (X. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.123984
Received 12 March 2019; Received in revised form 19 June 2019; Accepted 24 July 2019
Available online 29 July 2019
0022-1694/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
X. Wang, et al.
most hydrological models require a predefined watershed in order to
determine model simulation boundary (Arnold et al., 2012; Moriasi
et al., 2007; Wolock and McCabe Jr., 1995). However, it is difficult to
identify a watershed since the natural watershed has been largely al-
tered by intense human activities in modern urban areas. (2) Some grid-
based land surface models (e.g., VIC) are able to simulate large-scale
runoffs by dividing the study domain into many grid cells with a spatial
resolution greater than 1 km (Gao et al., 2010; Liang et al., 1994), but
they are still unsuitable for urban flood modeling because they simulate
vertical water flow and horizontal runoff separately. For example, VIC
assumes that water can only enter a grid cell via the atmosphere (i.e.,
no horizontal inflow or outflow interactions among grid cells) during
the first stage for vertical water balance simulation; in the second stage
for horizontal runoff simulation, it simply uses DEM-based river net-
work to connect individual grid cells in order to determine the
streamflow of watershed outlet (Liang et al., 1994). Such an assumption
apparently does not hold for urban flooding which usually occurs
quickly and is characterized with frequent inflow or outflow interac-
tions among grid cells. Besides, the finest resolution of VIC is 1 km,
which is too coarse to capture the rapid generation of surface runoff in
urban areas during heavy rainfall. (3) During flooding events, surface
runoffs or river flows can be reversed in some relatively-flat urban areas
because of the uneven increases to surface water depths at local scales.
That means the direction of surface runoff in each grid cell can be
constantly changing while the flood is quickly developing due to heavy
rainfall. However, all conventional hydrological models use DEM to
determine flow direction before initiating a model simulation (Callow
et al., 2007; Wise, 2007). The determined flow directions remain un-
changed during the entire model simulation. Apparently, none of the
latest hydrological models is capable of simulating the reverse-flow
phenomenon in many urban areas. Given the increasing attention to
building climate-resilient urban infrastructures (Costa et al., 2016;
Prasad et al., 2008), it is in urgent need to develop new methods or
approaches in support of accurate prediction of urban flooding under
heavy precipitation.
A large number of computer models for flood simulation have been
proposed in recent years (Gires et al., 2015; Kauffeldt et al., 2016;
Praskievicz and Chang, 2009; Salvadore et al., 2015; Sood and
Smakhtin, 2015; Teng et al., 2017), but these models are always based
on various assumptions which make them only suitable for simulating
some specific types of flood. In general, floods can be categorized into
four types based on their location of occurrence and causes, including
river flood, coastal flood, flash flood, and urban flood (Ali, 2018). River
flood occurs when a river channel is filled with too much water that is
more than its handling capacity, thus the surplus water overflows the
river banks and runs into the adjacent low-lying lands; coastal flood
occurs when tropical storms, earthquake or volcanic activities drive an
unusually-high amount of ocean water towards the inland; flash flood
occurs when a large amount of water is discharged within short period
of time (e.g., a sudden release of water from a dam); and urban flood is
mainly caused by rapid runoff over the large-scale impermeable sur-
faces under heavy rainfall. Conventional hydrological models (e.g., VIC,
SWAT, and TOPMODEL) are designed to simulate river streamflow
which might be used as inputs for river flood simulation, but they
cannot be applied directly for flood simulation because they are in-
capable of estimating flood extent and depth. Current flood models,
such as HEC-RAS (Loi et al., 2018), TUFLOW (Goodall et al., 2017),
CSIRO TVD (Teng et al., 2015), AutoRAPID (Follum et al., 2017), and
HAND (Zheng et al., 2018), are essentially flood inundation models
which assume that a large amount of water will first enter into the river
channel and lead to a rapid increase in water level; then the adjacent
low-lying areas will be flooded only after the river bank is overtopped
(shown in Fig. 1). This assumption usually holds for river, coastal, and
flash floods because a large amount of water must be first transported to
the “to-be-flooded” regions through river channels before any floods
2
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
occur. However, it does not hold for urban floods which are typically
caused by heavy rain storms and have been commonly observed in
many cities in recent years. Particularly, when a large amount of water
is dumped down to an urban area during a heavy precipitation event,
surface runoff will be generated immediately due to the almost-zero
infiltration of impermeable surfaces. Any locally low-lying areas (i.e.,
pits) will be easily flooded because of the quick accumulation of surface
runoff. Furthermore, the accumulated surface runoff can also flow into
the river channels and raise their water levels (shown in Fig. 1). Ap-
parently, these dynamics cannot be represented by flood inundation
models. Although many previous studies have applied flood inundation
models for urban flooding simulation (Teng et al., 2017), it is not sur-
prising to see that their real-world applications are always focused on
cities being passed through by a river. In general, flood inundation
models first estimate the total water volume using the information of
rainfall depth and total area of the study region; all water will then be
assumed to be dumped down into the river channel, leading to a rapid
increase in its water level; thus, low-lying regions close to the river
bank will always be flooded first while other low-lying regions located
far enough from the river will be inundated later or might be not in-
undated at all if they are blocked by some high-elevated lands. But this
is clearly not true in an urban setting where a large amount of water can
be poured down to every corner of a city during a rain storm. For ex-
ample, an empty swimming pool at the top of a mountain will also be
filled with water at the same time when the river’s water level is quickly
rising during heavy rainfall; however, flood inundation models will
result in no water in the swimming pool as long as the elevation of the
mountain is higher than the water elevation in the flooded river. Hence,
flood inundation models are not suitable for urban flood simulations
under heavy precipitation because of their inappropriateness in re-
flecting the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban flooding process.
Therefore, in this study, we will propose a new model for urban
flooding prediction under extreme precipitation events. Particularly, we
focus on heavy rain as it is the main cause for urban flooding. According
to the Glossary of Meteorological Terms by American Meteorological
Society (see http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Heavy_rain), heavy rain
is defined as rain with a rate of accumulation exceeding a specific value
that is geographically dependent. However, this definition is somehow
too general to be used as a quantitative criterion. There are many other
quantitative criteria used to define heavy rain. For example, the
Meteorological Service of New Zealand defines heavy rain as “50 mm or
more in a 6-hour period” or “100 mm or more in a 24-hour period” (see
https://www.metservice.com/warnings/weather-warning-criteria#
chart). In general, heavy rain can be regarded as a large amount of
rainfall during a relative short period of time. In order to reflect the
rapid development of urban floods under heavy rainfall, the new model
divides the study domain into many grid cells without any limitation on
the spatial resolution of the grid cell as long as the DEM data of the
same resolution are available. It can simulate both horizontal surface
runoff and vertical water flow simultaneously in each time step of
model simulation. This makes the model capable of reflecting the fre-
quent inflow or outflow interactions among grid cells and thus cap-
turing the rapid generation of surface runoff in urban areas during
heavy rainfall. The model can also account for typical characteristics of
urban areas, such as large-scale impermeable surfaces and urban drai-
nage systems. More importantly, the model uses both the surface ele-
vation and instantaneous surface water depth to dynamically determine
the directions of horizontal inflow and outflow for each grid cell during
each time step of model simulation; this enables the model to capture
the reverse-flow phenomenon which is commonly seen in flat urban
areas during heavy storms. The proposed model will then be used to
reproduce the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana to demonstrate
its effectiveness in predicting both flood extent and depth during real-
world flooding events.
X. Wang, et al.
Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of urban flooding process under heavy precipitation. Left: a simplified process simulated by flood inundation models; right: real
dynamic process of urban flooding.
2. Model development
During a heavy precipitation event, water often accumulates quickly
in urban areas and becomes surface runoff. The areas in the down-
stream direction of surface runoff are likely to be flooded. Therefore, it
is important to determine the direction of surface runoff before pre-
dicting which areas are expected to be flooded.
2.1. Direction of surface runoff
In order to simulate the complexity of Earth’s surface, we first
convert the continuous surface to many square grid cells. The size of the
grid cell (i.e., the length of one side of the cell, denoted as r) indicates
the spatial resolution of our model which can range from a few meters
to a few kilometers, depending on the geographical extent of the heavy
precipitation event of interest. For a given time (t), the instantaneous
height of a grid cell (denoted as p) is defined as the sum of its elevation
(l ) and surface water depth (h) (as illustrated in Fig. 2). In the case of no
surface water, the instantaneous height of a grid cell is equal to its
elevation and no surface runoff (or outflow) from this grid cell is gen-
erated. If a grid cell is covered by surface water due to a heavy rainfall
Fig. 2. Illustration of the instantaneous height of a grid cell.
3
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
or the inflow from its immediate neighbors, surface runoff is likely to be
generated in this grid cell and the outflow direction is determined by
the gradient of instantaneous height as described in the following.
As illustrated in Fig. 3, a given grid cell (labeled as 0) can have at
most one outflow direction while its inflows may come from at most all
of its immediate neighbors. For example, if its instantaneous height is
the lowest among all its immediate neighbors, there will be no outflow
but water in its immediate neighbors might all flow into this grid cell;
otherwise, there must be at least one immediate neighbor with its in-
stantaneous height lower than that of the focal grid cell, the surface
water in the grid cell will thus flow into the neighbor with the lowest
instantaneous height. For simplicity, here we use numbers from 1 to 8
to label the outflow directions of all grid cells within the domain (e.g.,
an outflow direction of 1 indicates that the water flows into the east
neighbor while an outflow direction of 4 means that the water flows
toward the southwest neighbor). As shown in the 3D view of the
gridded domain in Fig. 3, among all immediate neighbors of grid cell 0,
grid cell 2 has the lowest instantaneous height, thus we can use 2 to
represent the outflow direction of grid cell 0. Meanwhile, grid cell 0 is
expected to receive water from three of its immediate neighbors (i.e., 6,
7, and 8), thus its inflow directions should consist of 6, 7, and 8.
X. Wang, et al. Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984

Fig. 3. Inflow and outflow directions of within-domain grid cells.

Fig. 4. Domain adjustment by placing the boundary on downhill areas.

For a grid cell located in the edge or corner of the domain, its
outflow direction can be any one from 1 to 8; however, if the outflow
direction faces toward one of out-domain neighbors, the outflow from
this grid cell is completely or partially regarded as a discharge of the
domain to its surrounding area. For example, if the outflow direction of
the edge grid cell shown in Fig. 3 is 5, the outflow will completely
contribute to the domain’s discharge; however, if the outflow direction
is 6, a small portion of the outflow of this grid cell might enter into grid
cell 7 while the majority of the outflow will contribute to the domain’s
discharge. In contrast, the inflows to an edge or corner grid cell are
assumed to be only originated from its immediate neighbors within the
domain. Although the out-domain neighbors sometimes can also con-
tribute the inflows to the grid cell (e.g., in some mountainous regions,
as shown in Fig. 4), their contributions cannot be explicitly accounted
for as their instantaneous heights are unknown. Instead, we may
estimate the inflows from these out-domain neighbors based on the
local hydrograph or the latest observations. Meanwhile, we can adjust
the original domain size to avoid placing the boundary of the domain
on some uphill areas (as illustrated in Fig. 4), with the purpose of
minimizing the effects of inaccurate edge inflows on the water mass
balance within the domain.
2.2. Velocity of surface runoff
We use the momentum equation of Saint-Venant equations to esti-
mate the outflow velocity of a grid cell once its outflow direction is
determined. The Saint-Venant equations are originally developed to
calculate the momentum budget in a river channel (Chalfen and
Niemiec, 1986; Garcia and Kahawita, 1986; Strelkoff, 1970), as follows:

4
X. Wang, et al. Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984

u u h u2 For diagonal outflow directions (see case 2 in Fig. 5), the bottom
+u = g + gS CD
t x x h (1) slope (S) in Eq. (2) can be estimated by:
where, u is the water velocity (unit: m/s) and it varies with time and l1 l2
S=
location (the temporal and spatial variations of u are represented by (l1 l2 )2 + 2r 2 (5)
u / t and u/ x , respectively); h (unit: m) is the water depth at deepest
point for a slice of river channel defined by dx (unit: m) and it varies and the change in water depth along the outflow direction can be cal-
with location (represented by h/ x ); g is the gravity acceleration with a culated by:
rate of 9.8 m/s2; S = sin represents the bottom slope and (unit: %) is h h h1
= 2
the bottom slope angle for a slice of river channel defined by dx ; and CD x 2r (6)
is a drag coefficient in the river channel and varies with the shape and
roughness of the channel bed. When applying the above equation to (b) As shown in Eq. (2), h is defined as the water depth at deepest point
calculate the velocity of surface runoff within the gridded domain, a for a slice of river channel defined by dx. Here we discretize the
number of approximations should be made, as follows: continuous surface into small grid cells and we assume that the
water above one grid cell can only flow into one of its eight
(a) Given a small grid size (denoted as r, unit: m) and a short time step, neighbors, the slice of river channel defined by dx is thus always
it is reasonable to assume that the surface water flow within the within the current grid cell and its downstream neighbor. There-
grid cell and to its neighbor grid cells is steady and uniform. fore, the deepest water depth over dx should be the maximum be-
Specifically, “steady” means no temporal variation in water velocity tween h1 and h2 , and can be expressed as:
(i.e., u / t = 0 ) while “uniform” means no spatial variation in water
h = max(h1, h2) (7)
velocity (i.e., u / x = 0 ). Therefore, the left-hand side of Eq. (1)
becomes zero and we can rewrite it as:
(c) As the shape of the surface water tank above a grid cell is assumed
h u2 to be fixed while it moves toward the downstream grid cell by a
g S = CD
x h (2) small distance (dx) during a short period (dt), it is reasonable to
As shown in Fig. 5, the elevations of the upstream and downstream assume that the drag coefficient (CD) in Eq. (2) is dominated by the
cells are denoted as l1 and l2 , and their surface water depths are re- roughness of the grid cell which varies with different land cover/use
presented by h1 and h2 , respectively. For convenience, we classify the types. For example, a grid cell covered by trees and shrubs often has
outflow directions into two cases: parallel directions (1, 3, 5, and 7) and a higher drag coefficient than a grid cell used for urban develop-
diagonal directions (2, 4, 6, and 8). For parallel outflow directions (see ment. In general, the drag coefficient for grid cells covered by ve-
case 1 in Fig. 5), the bottom slope (S) in Eq. (2) can be estimated by: getation should be adjusted according to the area, density, and type
of vegetation. The effects of these factors on the drag coefficient
l1 l2 have been widely investigated in the literature (Arcement and
S=
(l1 l2 )2 + r2 (3) Schneider, 1989; Cushman-Roisin and Beckers, 2011; Fischenich
and Dudley, 1999; Hui et al., 2010; Wohl, 1998). The value of CD
and the change in water depth along the outflow direction can be cal-
usually varies between 0.003 and 0.2. Based on the recommenda-
culated by:
tions in the literature (Arcement and Schneider, 1989; Hui et al.,
h h h1 2010), a predefined value of CD is assigned to each category of land
= 2
x r (4) cover/use. Here, we refer to the National Land Cover Classification

Fig. 5. Illustration of the calculations of bottom slope and water depth change along the outflow direction.

5
X. Wang, et al. Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984

Table 1
Drag coefficients and infiltration adjustment coefficients for different land cover classes.
USGS Land Cover Class USGS Land Cover Description Drag Coefficient, CD Infiltration Adjustment Coefficient,

11 Open Water 0.003 0%

12 Perennial Ice/Snow 0.003 0%
21 Developed, Open Space (0%–20% impervious coverage) 0.014 80%
22 Developed, Low Intensity (20%–49% impervious coverage) 0.011 50%
23 Developed, Medium Intensity (50%–79% impervious coverage) 0.008 20%
24 Developed, High Intensity (80%–100% impervious coverage) 0.005 0%
31 Barren Land (Rock/Sand/Clay) 0.010 100%
41 Deciduous Forest 0.150 100%
42 Evergreen Forest 0.150 100%
43 Mixed Forest 0.150 100%
51 Dwarf Scrub 0.200 100%
52 Shrub/Scrub 0.200 100%
71 Grassland/Herbaceous 0.120 100%
72 Sedge/Herbaceous 0.120 100%
73 Lichens 0.120 100%
74 Moss 0.120 100%
81 Pasture/Hay 0.150 100%
82 Cultivated Crops 0.180 100%
90 Woody Wetlands 0.150 0%
95 Emergent Herbaceous Wetlands 0.120 0%

System issued by the United States Geological Survey (USGS, (i.e., Eq. (10) should be used) are exactly the same.
website: https://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd11_leg.php) to classify land Case 1: h1 = h2 . We can choose either h1 (or h2 ) to represent
cover/use into 20 categories. The values of CD for these categories max(h1, h2) . In order to meet the requirement defined by Eq. (11), we
are listed in Table 1. must have l1 > l2 . Meanwhile, h/ x in Eq. (2) will be 0, thus Eq. (9) can
be rewritten as:
Based on the above approximations, we can rewrite Eq. (2) to derive
the outflow velocity (u), as follows: l1 l2 h1
u= g
(l1 l2 )2 + r2 CD (12)
h h
u= g S
x CD (8) In this case, the outflow velocity of the upstream grid cell will be
solely affected by the elevation gradient.
Once the outflow direction is determined, all the variables in the
Case 2: h1 < h2 . We should choose h2 for max(h1, h2) . In order to
right-hand side of Eq. (8) can be explicitly calculated according to Eqs.
meet the requirement defined by Eq. (11), we must have l1 > l2 . Equa-
(3)–(7). In detail, if the outflow direction is labeled as 1, 3, 5, or 7, the
tion (9) can be rewritten as:
outflow velocity can be estimated by:
l1 l2 h2 h1 h2
l1 l2 h2 h1 max(h1, h2) u= g
u= g (l1 l2 )2 + r 2 r CD (13)
(l1 l2 )2 + r 2 r CD (9)
Apparently, (h2 h1)/ r in Eq. (13) is positive, indicating that the
If the outflow direction is labeled as 2, 4, 6, or 8, the outflow ve- deeper water depth in the downstream grid cell tends to restrain the
locity can be estimated by: water coming from the upstream grid cell. Furthermore, this may imply
that the downstream grid cell is receiving more water from its other
l1 l2 h2 h1 max(h1, h2) neighbors, leading to a faster increase in its surface water depth than
u= g
(l1 l2 )2 + 2r 2 2r CD (10) the upstream grid cell; after a certain time, the instantaneous height of
the downstream grid cell may become higher than that of the upstream
Here the instantaneous height for the upstream grid cell is grid cell (i.e., p1 < p2 ), the flow direction can thus be reversed even
p1 = l1 + h1 and that for the downstream grid cell is p2 = l2 + h2 , re- though the elevation gradient still exists.
spectively. Since the surface water always flows from the upstream grid Case 3: h1 > h2 . We should choose h1 for max(h1, h2) . In this case, the
cell to the downstream grid, we must have the following relationship: relationship between l1 and l2 can be arbitrary (refer to the three sce-
p1 = l1 + h1 > p2 = l2 + h2 (11) narios under case 3 in Fig. 5) as long as the instantaneous heights of two
grid cells meet the requirement defined by Eq. (11). Eq. (9) can be
While the elevation of each grid cell is usually constant during a written as:
short period of dt, the surface water depth can vary significantly with
several factors (e.g., inflows from its neighbors, outflow to the lowest l1 l2 h2 h1 h1
u= g
neighbor, infiltration to the underlying soil, and evapotranspiration to (l1 l2 )2 + r 2 r CD (14)
the atmosphere). Thus, the relationship between h1 and h2 can also
change over time. This means that the value of max(h1, h2) in Eqs. (9) Note that (h2 h1)/ r in Eq. (14) is negative in this case. As sub-
and (10) should be determined separately for each time step. To illus- tracting a negative value is equivalent to adding a positive value, this
trate how to determine the value of max(h1, h2) , we consider three cases indicates that the higher water depth in the upstream grid cell tends to
for the relationship between h1 and h2 (as illustrated in Fig. 6). Since speed up its outflow. Particularly, the 3rd scenario in this case (i.e.,
determining the value for max(h1, h2) is not affected by the outflow l1 < l2 , see Fig. 6) may be regarded as the next-stage result from Case 2
direction, we will only consider parallel outflow directions (i.e., 1, 3, 5, while the outflow direction is reversed due to the greater and faster
and 7) for illustration purposes (i.e., Eq. (9) should be used). Note that inflows into the initial downstream grid cell. In other words, the initial
the determination rules for diagonal outflow directions of 2, 4, 6, and 8 upstream grid cell with a higher elevation can sometimes be turned into

6
X. Wang, et al.
Fig. 6. Illustration of the relationship between h1 and h2 .
a downstream grid cell. More importantly, this implies that the flow
direction of surface runoff can sometimes be reversed due to the uneven
increases to the surface water depth at local scales.
2.3. Volume of surface runoff
The depth of the surface runoff is determined by the gradient of
instantaneous height between the upstream grid cell and the down-
stream one (i.e., p1 p2 ). Here, we assume that the surface runoff
above the upstream grid cell is shaped as a square water tank and the
shape of this water tank will not change over a very short period of dt.
In detail, the floorage of this water tank is the same as the area of the
grid cell and its initial height is equal to the gradient of instantaneous
height (i.e., p1 p2 ). Apparently, the height of the outflow water tank
of the upstream grid cell should be non-negative and must be not
greater than its initial surface water depth h1. Once the depth of the
outflow water tank is determined, the outflow volume during dt is
proportional to the moving-out floorage of the water tank from the grid
cell, which is further determined by outflow direction and velocity (as
the shape of the water tank remains unchanged). Here we should note
that, for parallel outflow directions, the water from the upstream grid
cell will only flow into the downstream one; however, for diagonal
outflow directions, the upstream water may also partially flow into the
other two side neighbors (as illustrated in case 2 of Fig. 7) as long as the
instantaneous heights of these two neighbors are lower than that of the
upstream grid cell. The moving-out floorage of the water tank during dt
is denoted as dA and its calculation varies with the outflow direction.
Specifically, the outflow velocity (u) should be first calculated ac-
cording to Eqs. (9) or (10) once the outflow direction is determined.
Next, the moving-out floorage of the water tank can be calculated as
follows (see also Fig. 7):
Case 1: Parallel outflow directions (1, 3, 5, and 7). The water tank
will only move into the downstream grid cell and the moving-out
floorage can be calculated as:
dA = r u dt (15)
Case 2: Diagonal outflow directions (2, 4, 6, and 8). The water tank
may also need to pass through the other two side neighbors when
7
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
moving downward to the downstream grid cell. The expected floorage
moving into each side neighbor can be calculated as:
1 1
r u dt (u dt )2
2 2 (16)
and the expected floorage moving into the downstream grid cell is
computed as:
1
(u dt ) 2
2 (17)
Thus, the total moving-out floorage of the water tank in this case
should be the sum of moving-in floorage of the downstream grid cell
and the other two side neighbors. It can be calculated as:
1
dA = 2 r u dt (u dt )2
2 (18)
After the moving-out floorage of the water tank (dA) is computed
with Eqs. (15) or (18), the outflow volume (unit: m3/s) of the upstream
grid cell during dt can be calculated as:
Vdt = dA (p1 p2 ) (19)
Thus, the remaining volume of the water tank in the upstream grid
cell is calculated as:
Vdt* = (r 2 dA) (p1 p2 ) (20)
Here we should note that Eqs. (15)–(20) hold only if some surface
water is present in the upstream grid cell (i.e., h1 > 0 ); otherwise, there
will be no surface runoff (i.e., Vdt = 0 and Vdt* = 0 ).
As shown in Fig. 3, the upstream grid cell of interest might also
serve as a downstream grid cell to one or more of its immediate
neighbors because it is allowed to receive inflows from multiple grid
cells. The outflows from its upstream neighbors during a short time of dt
can also be calculated separately by Eqs. (15)–(17). As all these out-
flows from the upstream neighbors will become the inflow to the grid
cell of interest, we can sum them up to compute its total inflow during
dt (denoted as Vdt , unit: m3/s). Note that the outflows from its upstream
grid cells to their two side neighbors in case 2 of Fig. 7 should be de-
termined by their instantaneous heights in a case-by-case fashion. For
X. Wang, et al.
Fig. 7. Calculation of the moving-out floorage for the upstream grid cell.
example, if the instantaneous heights of both side neighbors are lower
than that of the upstream grid cell, then they both will receive the same
portion of the outflow as expressed by Eq. (16); if their instantaneous
heights are both greater than that of the upstream grid cell, then they
will receive no water from the upstream grid cell (i.e., the expected
outflows to these side neighbors will be added to the outflow to the
downstream grid cell); if one neighbor is higher than the upstream grid
cell and the other is lower, then the lower neighbor will receive its
portion of the outflow as expressed by Eq. (16) and the expected portion
to the higher neighbor will be added to the outflow to the downstream
grid cell.
2.4. Mass balance of surface water
In order to calculate the water mass balance within a grid cell, we
usually need to consider the entire column of the grid cell (as illustrated
in case 1 of Fig. 8). However, here our focus is on the surface water
during flooding season which is typically generated during a short time
period because of heavy precipitation. As the surface water must pass
through the unsaturated soil to recharge groundwater and this process
usually takes a longer time period, it is reasonable to assume that the
interaction between surface water and groundwater is negligible during
a heavy precipitation event. Perhaps the only exception for the above
assumption is rivers or lakes where groundwater recharges surface
water by providing the base flow in rivers or the base water level in
lakes. However, this recharge process is too slow to contribute to the
commonly-seen floods which usually develop in a short time period.
Thus, in the following analyses, we will only consider the column above
the normal aquifer within a grid cell to calculate the mass balance of
surface water (see case 2 of Fig. 8). As for the unsaturated soil above the
aquifer, we assume that water within this layer only flows downward
(i.e., there is no horizontal water flow). Furthermore, the water loss due
to evapotranspiration during a flooding event is often very small
compared to the large amount of precipitation; it thus can be assumed
to be negligible in the calculation of surface water mass balance during
a heavy precipitation event. Therefore, the water mass balance equa-
tion in case 2 of Fig. 8 can be further simplified as:
8
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
Water mass gain
= Precipitation + Surface inflow Surface outflow Infiltration
(21)
The above equation indicates that the surface water mass change in
a grid cell is expressed as the tradeoff between the total mass inputs
(contributed by precipitation and surface inflow) and the total mass
outputs (caused by surface outflow and infiltration). Here, the mass of
surface inflow and outflow can be directly calculated by multiplying the
total volumes of surface inflow and outflow (i.e., Vdt and Vdt ) by the
average water density during dt. The total water mass from precipita-
tion during dt can be estimated with the observations from weather
stations and radars or the simulations from weather prediction models.
The calculation of infiltration should account for various soil textures
and land cover/use and is described in detail as follows.
For simplicity, we assume that all water inputs and outputs have the
same water density. Thus, the calculation of water mass balance is
equivalent to the calculation of water volume balance. For a given time
t, the infiltration rate of a given grid cell is denoted as k (varying from
0% to 100%). The filtration rate here means how much of the total
surface water above this grid cell will be infiltrated into the soil.
Apparently, the infiltration rate is significantly influenced by the initial
soil moisture content (denoted as M, ranging from 0% to 100%). The
effects of initial soil moisture content on infiltration rate have been
studied a long time ago (Horton, 1933; Houser, 2005; Morin and
Benyamini, 1977; Philip, 1957; Stähli et al., 1999). According to Gray
and Norum (1967), the infiltration rate decreases exponentially as the
initial soil moisture content increases. Here, we use an exponential
function to represent their relationship, as follows:
k=e M (22)
where is a damping coefficient describing the decreasing rate of in-
filtration due to the increase in soil moisture and its values usually vary
between 5 and 10. In general, if the surface soil is completely saturated
(i.e., the initial moisture content reaches its maximum, M = 100%),
then no surface water will be infiltrated (i.e., the infiltration rate de-
creases to zero, k = 0%). It is worth to mention that the theoretical
X. Wang, et al. Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984

Fig. 8. Difference in the water mass balance equation between the entire grid cell and the column above aquifer only.

Table 2
Twelve soil texture classes and their related parameters.
Soil Soil texture Porosity, n Saturated hydraulic Damping
texture description conductivity, coefficient,
class KS (m/s)

1 Sand 0.395 1.76 × 10−4 5.000

2 Loamy sand 0.410 1.56 × 10−4 5.562
3 Sandy loam 0.435 3.47 × 10−5 9.039
4 Silt loam 0.485 7.20 × 10−6 9.824
5 Silt* 0.493 1.27 × 10−5 9.667
6 Loam 0.451 6.95 × 10−6 9.831
7 Sandy clay 0.420 6.30 × 10−6 9.849
loam
8 Silty clay loam 0.477 1.70 × 10−6 9.981
9 Clay loam 0.476 2.45 × 10−6 9.959
10 Sandy clay 0.426 2.17 × 10−6 9.968
11 Silty clay 0.492 1.03 × 10−6 10.000
12 Clay 0.482 1.28 × 10−6 9.993

*
Note the data for silt soil is not available from Clapp and Hornberger
(1978). Here, properties of silt soil are estimated based on the available data for
silt loam and silty clay loam. For example, the porosity of silt soil is estimated
by this equation: n (Silt) = 2 × n(Silt loam) – n(Silty clay loam). The saturated Fig. 9. Exponential relationship between infiltration rate and initial surface soil
hydraulic conductivity of silt soil is estimated in a similar way. moisture content.

infiltration rate in this case might not decrease to exactly zero. This is
because the hydraulic conductivity of saturated soil is not completely
zero (see Table 2). However, since the typical values of saturated hy-
draulic conductivity are ranging between 1.03 × 10−6 and
1.76 × 10−4 m/s (Clapp and Hornberger, 1978), implying that the
movement of water in saturated soil is too slow to release sufficient
space for the surface water to be infiltrated during a short time period.
This is especially true when the internal time step of our model in-
tegration is very small (typically in the order of a few seconds).
Therefore, it is reasonable to treat the infiltration rate as zero in prac-
tice. To meet this requirement, the minimum value of should be used
in Eq. (22). In detail, if we put M = 100% and = 5 into the right-hand
side of Eq. (22), the calculated value of k is 0.67% which can be rea-
sonably regarded as 0%; however, if we further decrease the value of ,
the value of k becomes too large to be deemed to be zero. Therefore, the
minimum value of should be 5. We also should note that, for some
types of soil with very small particles (e.g., silty clay), although they are
not fully saturated (i.e., M < 100%), the infiltration rate can still be as
low as zero. In this case, we may increase the value of to damp the
infiltration. Particularly, if we increase to 10, even though the surface
soil is only half saturated (i.e., M = 50%), the infiltration rate will drop
to 0.67% which can be deemed to be 0%. This is reasonable enough to
represent the damped infiltration of silty clay soil which has the
smallest particles among all types of soil. Therefore, the maximum
value of is assigned 10. The exponential relationships between in-
filtration rate and initial soil moisture content with the minimum and
maximum damping coefficients are shown in Fig. 9. In general, the
damping coefficient ( ) can be determined by soil texture. Smaller
values of should be used for coarse-textured soils (e.g., sand) to reflect
high infiltration, while bigger values should be selected for fine-tex-
tured soils (e.g., clay) to indicate low infiltration.
In order to find an appropriate value of the damping coefficient
from 5 to 10 for each type of soil texture, we need to determine the
saturated hydraulic conductivity (denoted as KS, unit: m/s) within the
soil as it also correlates with soil texture. In general, high hydraulic
conductivity means that water can move quickly within the soil, leading

9
X. Wang, et al.
to more space in the soil to allow more surface water to be infiltrated
during a certain time period. This corresponds to small damping effects
on infiltration and smaller values of β should be chosen to reflect re-
duced damping effects. Similarly, high values of β should be selected to
indicate increased damping effects for low hydraulic conductivity. In
other words, the damping coefficient ( ) is inversely proportional to the
saturated hydraulic conductivity (KS). Here, we consider 12 classes of
soil texture as defined in the United States Department of Agriculture
soil texture triangle (USDA, 2017). Clapp and Hornberger (1978) have
identified the key soil hydraulic properties (including saturated hy-
draulic conductivity and porosity) based on 1,845 soil samples, which
are listed in Table 2. It has been found that sand has the highest satu-
rated hydraulic conductivity (i.e., 1.76 × 10−4 m/s) while silty clay has
the lowest (i.e., 1.03 × 10−6 m/s). Accordingly, sand should have the
smallest damping coefficient (i.e., = 5) and silty clay should have the
biggest damping coefficient (i.e., = 10). We assume that the damping
coefficient and the saturated hydraulic conductivity are linearly and
inversely correlated. The damping coefficients for other soil textures
can be calculated as follows:
Ks 1.03 × 10 6
= 10 × (10 5)
1.76 × 10 4 1.03 × 10 6 (23)
The calculated damping coefficients for 12 soil texture classes are
also listed in Table 2.
In addition to the damping coefficient ( ), the initial soil moisture
content (M ) is also required to estimate the infiltration rate according
to Eq. (22). In general, the initial soil moisture content can be directly
measured through field trips or estimated with historical observations.
Thus, the initial infiltration rate can be calculated with Eq. (22) after an
appropriate value of is selected from Table 2.
Generally speaking, infiltration is a relatively slow process com-
pared to the rapid surface runoff caused by intense rainfall during a
flooding event. Thus, we can assume that the infiltrated water from t to
t + dt only comes from the remaining surface water at time t + dt . In
other words, infiltration only takes place instantaneously at time t +
dt . Thus, the calculation of the infiltrated water can be broken down
into two steps: 1) calculate the volume of remaining surface water at
time t + dt without considering infiltration; 2) compute the infiltration
rate at time t with Eq. (22) and apply it to the remaining water obtained
in the first step to estimate the total volume of infiltrated water from t
and t + dt . Specifically, the remaining surface water without con-
sideration of infiltration in the upstream grid cell at time t + dt (de-
noted as Vt~+ dt ) must be a non-negative value (i.e., ≥0) and can be ex-
pressed as:
Vt~+ dt = h1 r 2 + P r 2 dt + V dt V dt (24)
where P is the precipitation rate above the grid cell at time t (unit: m/s),
Vdt and Vdt represent the volumes of inflow and outflow of the grid cell
from t to t + dt , respectively. Here we should note that using pre-
cipitation rate as the input allows us to simulate the rapid evolution of
urban floods during heavy precipitation. Particularly, the computa-
tional time step (i.e., dt) of the proposed model is usually in the order of
seconds and is a function of grid cell size and water velocity defined by
the well-known Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition (Courant
et al., 1967). In other words, in order to ensure model convergence, we
need to make sure that a particle of water entering a grid cell would not
travel through it until a computation step within the model has been
completed. For example, if the grid size is 100 m and the calculated
maximum water velocity with the Saint-Venant equations is 5 m/s, then
the time for the water to pass through one grid cell would be 100/
5 = 20 s. Therefore, we need to choose a time step less than 20 s to
ensure the water did not leave the grid cell too soon.
Once the remaining surface water without consideration of in-
filtration is calculated with Eq. (24), we can proceed to calculate the
infiltrated water volume at time t + dt . Assume that the soil moisture
content at time t is denoted as Mt , the infiltration rate (k) can be
10
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
calculated with Eq. (22). Thus, the total volume of water expected to be
infiltrated into the soil for the given grid cell (denoted as Vdt ) can be
calculated as:
Vdt = k Vt~+ dt (25)
Meanwhile, we should note that the actual volume of infiltrated
water for the grid cell is limited by the maximum volume of water that
the soil can hold while it is completely saturated (denoted as Vmax ),
which is further determined by the depth of unsaturated surface soil
(i.e., depth of vadose zone or groundwater level, denoted as q, unit: m)
and its porosity (denoted as n , unit: %). Specifically, Vmax is calculated
by:
Vmax = r 2 q n (26)
where the value of q is usually measured through field trips or esti-
mated with historical observations, while the value of n is determined
by soil texture (see Table 2). Thus, the maximum volume of water that
the soil in the grid cell can still infiltrate at time t can be calculated as
Vmax (1 Mt ) . Here, we will consider the following two cases to cal-
culate the actual infiltrated water volume during dt and to update the
soil moisture content at time t + dt :
Case 1: Vdt > V max (1 Mt ) , the grid cell can only infiltrate a por-
tion of the Vdt as the soil will be saturated. Thus, the total volume of
surface water left in the grid cell at time t + dt is represented by:
Vt + dt = Vt~+ dt Vmax (1 Mt ) (27)
Meanwhile, the soil moisture content at time t + dt is updated as
follows:
Mt + dt = 100% (28)
Case 2: Vdt Vmax (1 Mt ) , all of the surface water to be infiltrated
will be ultimately infiltrated into this grid cell. Thus, the total volume of
surface water remaining in the grid cell at time t + dt can be expressed
as:
Vt + dt = Vt~+ dt (1 k) (29)
Meanwhile, the soil moisture content at time t + dt is updated as
follows:
Vdt
Mt + dt = Mt + × 100%
Vmax (30)
2.5. Consideration of urban area
In general, the calculation of the expected water to be infiltrated as
specified by Eq. (25) can be applied to all natural surfaces. However, it
is not applicable for urban regions which are commonly covered by
impermeable materials. In this case, surface runoff might be generated
immediately after rainfall reaches the impermeable surfaces. Urban
drainage (or stormwater) systems are therefore designed to collect the
surface runoff through street drains and discharge it into a detention
basin or the nearest receiving water body to minimize the possibility of
flooding (Butler and Davies, 2003; Schmitt et al., 2004; Yazdanfar and
Sharma, 2015). The maximum capability of an urban drainage system
in conveying surface runoff is designed according to the historical
rainfall intensity-durationfrequency (IDF) curves derived from pre-
cipitation observations at weather stations. IDF curves describe all
characteristics of extreme precipitation events with different durations
and return periods at a given location and are widely used for guiding
the hydraulic design of urban drainage systems and other infra-
structures (Cheng and AghaKouchak, 2014; Sarhadi and Soulis, 2017;
Wang et al., 2014).
Here we should note that some urban drainage models allow the
consideration of detailed hydraulic structures of an urban stormwater
system, such as pipe network, combined sewer, and drop shafts. A
commonly-used model for this is the Storm Water Management Model
X. Wang, et al.
(SWMM) (Gironás et al., 2010). However, the underground stormwater
pipe network in an urban setting is considerably complicated, especially
when the study domain is large. The data for such a complex network
are typically not available to the public. This makes the application of
SWMM model practically difficult for many public users. More im-
portantly, SWMM is usually used to simulate how much water can be
held by the stormwater pipe network under various engineering design
scenarios. There are a number of similar models based on different
implementations of the Saint-Venant equations (i.e., 1D, 2D, or their
combinations) to deal with the interactions between drainage flow and
surface flow (Barnard et al., 2007; Leandro et al., 2009, 2011). How-
ever, we should note that these models are intentionally designed for
simulating the water distribution in the stormwater system given that
the receiving water volume from surface runoff is within its handling
capacity. But once the capacity is exceeded, these models might lose
their effectiveness as the entire pipe network is filled with water. This is
often the case for urban floods under heavy rain storms where people
are more concerned with the regions likely to be flooded and their
expected water depths. To tackle these challenges, our model will only
consider the capacity of an urban stormwater system, rather than its
detailed pipe network. Specifically, if the total runoff per unit time
generated over urban surface does not exceed the capacity of the
stormwater system, no flood is expected; otherwise, a portion of the
runoff which cannot be handled by the stormwater system will be ac-
cumulated somewhere above the surface, resulting in floods. The ca-
pacity of an urban stormwater system can be easily estimated with the
rainfall IDF curves used for designing the system. IDF curves are readily
available through public sources and easier to obtain than the pipe
network of urban stormwater system. This overcomes the challenge in
data availability for SWMM model. Most importantly, our model em-
phasizes the situation of heavy precipitation where stormwater systems
are often overloaded and urban floods are very likely to be expected. It
should be noted that our assumption of using IDF curves to determine
the capacity of stormwater system in urban areas is based on the con-
dition that the stormwater system is fully functional. In other words, if
the stormwater system is not fully functional, using IDF curves might
underestimate the flood extent or depth; in this case, some adjustments
to the IDF-estimated capacity of stormwater system should be per-
formed accordingly. Through a full consideration of the effects of land
cover/use, soil type, street drain, and open ditch on the horizontal
movement and vertical infiltration of surface runoff, our model is able
to simulate both flood extent and depth effectively.
In order to calculate the mass balance of surface water in an urban
area, we simply classify urban grid cells covered by impermeable sur-
faces into two categories: a) with a street drain, and b) without a street
drain. Note that some grid cells in an urban area might be not fully
covered by impervious surfaces, such as parks and zoos where the in-
filtration rate is still high. For urban grid cells without a street drain, we
use the percent coverage of impervious surface in each grid cell (as
indicated by its land cover class in Table 1) as a criterion to make ad-
justments to its infiltration rate (see Fig. 10). Specifically, we use an
infiltration adjustment coefficient (denoted as , ranging from 0% to
100%) to indicate how to make an adjustment to the original
Fig. 10. Schematic illustration of infiltration for urban grid cells.
11
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
infiltration rate (k) derived according to the soil texture class without
considering the impervious surface above the soil. The adjusted in-
filtration rate (denoted as k ' ) can be calculated as:
k' = k (31)
If a grid cell is completely covered by impervious materials, the
value of should be 0%, indicating that the infiltration rate will de-
crease to zero after the adjustment; if there is no impervious coverage
for a grid cell, then the value of should be 100%, indicating that the
infiltration rate is solely determined by the soil texture. This is usually
the case for many natural surfaces, such as barren, forest, shrubland,
herbaceous, and planted/cultivated regions. However, we should note
that the soils beneath other surfaces (e.g., water and wetlands) are al-
ways saturated, thus the infiltration rates for these two types of land
cover should be 0 even though various soil textures may be reported.
Here, we apply = 0% to lands covered by water and wetlands to in-
dicate that no infiltration occurs. For a grid cell partially covered by
impervious materials, we apply four different values of (i.e., 0%, 20%,
50%, and 80%) corresponding to the four urban land cover classes
(refer to Table 1). For example, if the land cover of a grid cell is clas-
sified as low intensity develop areas with 20% to 49% impervious
coverage, the value of should be 50%, indicating that the original
infiltration rate (k) will be halved.
According to Eq. (25), the total volume of water expected to be
infiltrated (Vdt ) should be recalculated with the updated infiltration rate
(k ' ), as follows:
Vdt = k Vt~+ dt (32)
Similarly, Eq. (29) should be replaced by:
Vt + dt = Vt~+ dt (1 k) (33)
Based on the above adjustments, the remaining surface water for
urban grid cells can be calculated according to the following two cases:
Case 1: an urban grid cell without a street drain. The total volume of
surface water remaining in the grid cell at time t + dt can be calculated
using either Eqs. (27) or (33), depending on whether the soil will be
saturated or not. Note that the adjusted infiltration rate should be used
in this case.
Case 2: an urban grid cell with a street drain. All the surface water is
supposed to flow into the underground drainage system through the
street drain unless the intensity of incoming surface water exceeds the
designed capacity of this inlet (shown in Fig. 9). Assume that the
maximum capacity of a street drain in terms of collecting incoming
surface water during a short time period of dt is measured by I (unit:
m/s), it can be easily derived from the IDF curves used to design the
drain inlet once the expected duration of the precipitation event is
determined. Thus, the total surface water volume that can be accom-
modated by the drainage system during dt , denoted as VD , is expressed
as:
VD = I dt (34)
Here, the total volume of remaining surface water without con-
sideration of infiltration at t + dt is still denoted as Vt~+ dt and calculated
X. Wang, et al.
by Eq. (24). Apparently, if Vt~+ dt VD , all the surface water is supposed
to flow into the underground drainage system, thus we have Vt + dt = 0;
otherwise, the total volume of remaining surface water after con-
sidering the discharge into drainage system can be calculated by:
Vt + dt = Vt~+ dt VD
Once the volume of remaining surface water after a short time
period of dt (i.e., Vt + dt ) is calculated with Eqs. (27), (29), (33), or (35),
the surface water depth (or flood depth) above a given grid cell at time
t + dt can be directly calculated as follows:
Vt + dt
ht + dt =
r2
Based on Eq. (36), the flood depth above all grid cells within a given
study area during and after the heavy precipitation event can be si-
mulated.
3. Application
3.1. Study area
Here we will apply the proposed model to simulate the 2016 flood
in Louisiana, United States with the purpose of demonstrating its per-
formance in simulating real-world flooding events. In August 2016, a
severe weather system brought prolonged rainfall in about 72 h to the
southern parts of Louisiana resulting in widespread and catastrophic
flooding. The flood damaged more than 140,000 houses, required
evacuation of more than 20,000 people, and led to at least 13 deaths
(NOAA, 2016; Vahedifard et al., 2016; Watson et al., 2017). Monetary
losses resulting from various damages to homes, businesses, and in-
frastructure were estimated to be $10 billion (Watson et al., 2017).
Although this disaster was not caused by a named tropical storm, it has
been regarded as an historic and unprecedented flood event in
Louisiana and one of the worst natural disasters in United States. As one
of the severely-affected areas in south Louisiana during this flooding
Fig. 11. Observed reverse flow in the Vermilion River within Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. The reverse-flow phenomenon commonly occurs in the Vermilion River as
the downstream rainfall runoff enters the river at a faster rate than the upstream runoff. The photo in this figure is derived from a YouTube video recording the
reverse flow in the Vermilion River near the Rotary Point location in the City of Lafayette after the 2016 flood (“Vermilion River Flowing Backwards” by FACE
Magazine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ymtBtd8LMs).
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
event, Lafayette Parish is bisected by the Vermilion River which has
historically been heavily flooded due to the reverse-flow phenomenon
(Kinsland, 1998; Kinsland and Wildgen, 2006) (see also Fig. 11). During
heavy rainfall events, parts of the Vermilion River in the Lafayette area
can experience negative discharge since the rise in water level in
(35)
downstream reaches exceeds the water level in upstream reaches,
leading to an inversion in the flow direction (Watson et al., 2017). This
reverse-flow phenomenon is mainly caused by the large area of urba-
nization and has been well confirmed by the 2016 flood profiles as
reported by the United States Geological Survey (Watson et al., 2017).
Apparently, this phenomenon cannot be handled by conventional hy-
drological or flooding simulation models as they are all based on an
(36)
assumption of no reverse flow. By contrast, the proposed model in this
study can deal with the reverse in flow direction caused by the uneven
increases to the surface water depths at local scales. Therefore, we will
specifically focus on Lafayette Parish in this application. The total area
of Lafayette Parish is 696.7 km2. The proposed model will be used to
simulate the flood extent and depth of the 2016 flood in Lafayette
Parish. The simulated results will be compared to the observed flooding
records to help validate the performance of the proposed model.
3.2. Data collection
The proposed model requires the data for elevations, land cover, soil
texture, depth of vadose zone (or groundwater level), precipitation, and
initial soil moisture content as inputs to simulate flood extent and depth
for the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish. Here, the elevation data for
Lafayette Parish are collected from the Louisiana Statewide Lidar
Project which provides a high-resolution 5 m digital elevation model
(DEM) dataset for the entire state of Louisiana (Cunningham et al.,
2004). The dataset is available for public access through the Louisiana
Atlas GIS Platform (website: https://maps.ga.lsu.edu/lidar2000/). The
digital elevation map for Lafayette Parish is shown in Fig. 11. Land
cover data for Lafayette Parish are obtained from the National Land
Cover Database 2011 (NLCD 2011) which is the most recent national
12
X. Wang, et al.
land cover product created by the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics
(MRLC) Consortium (Coulston et al., 2013; Homer et al., 2015). The
NLCD 2011 dataset has a spatial resolution of 30 m and is available for
public access at https://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2011.php. Soil texture data
for Lafayette Parish are collected from the Soil Survey Geographic
Database (SSURGO) provided by United States Department of Agri-
culture (SSURGO, 2018). The SSURGO provides high-resolution county-
wide soil data and is available for public access at: https://
websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/WebSoilSurvey.aspx. The data
for groundwater level of Lafayette Parish are derived from the National
Water Information System (NWIS) hosted by United States Geological
Survey (USGS) (NWIS, 2018). The NWIS dataset contains extensive
water data for the entire country of United States. Public access to many
of these data is provided via the USGS Water Data Web Interface
available at: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis. The precipitation data
for Lafayette Parish during the 2016 flood are collected from the Na-
tional Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) under the Na-
tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of United States (NCEI,
2018). Particularly, the gauged precipitation data at a weather station
in the Lafayette Regional Airport is derived from the NCEI dataset at:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/. The 2016 flood in Louisiana
occurred between August 12 to 22 as heavy rainfalls poured down
during August 12 and 13. As recorded by the weather station in the
Lafayette Regional Airport, the total precipitation received from August
12 to 13 was as high as 528.1 mm (see Fig. 12). The data for soil
moisture content are obtained from the National Integrated Drought
Information System (NIDIS) under the National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration of United States (NIDIS, 2004). The NIDIS da-
taset is available for public access at: https://www.drought.gov/
drought/data-gallery/soil-moisture. Here we should note that the
model’s spatial resolution is usually finer than that of the NIDIS soil
moisture dataset. The NIDIS dataset needs to be regridded to match the
spatial resolution of our model runs. Besides, the soil moisture values in
NIDIS dataset are provided in the form of water depth (unit: mm) and
should be converted to percentage in order to provide initial soil
moisture input for our model. To do so, we need to use the information
for the depth of unsaturated surface soil (i.e., depth of vadose zone or
groundwater level) and the soil porosity. As mentioned above, the data
for groundwater level can be obtained from the NWIS dataset while the
soil porosity can be determined by soil type. For example, if the
soil moisture of a given grid cell is estimated as 600 mm by the
NIDIS dataset, the depth of its groundwater level is 5 m (or 5000 mm),
and its main soil type is silt (i.e., its porosity is 0.493), respectively,
its soil moisture percent can be calculated as: 600 mm/
(5000 mm * 0.493) = 0.243 (i.e., 24.3%).
In addition to the above required data, it is important to provide
information about location of street drains in order to allow the model
to interact with the underground drainage systems in urban regions.
However, according to the Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG),
Fig. 12. Daily precipitation in Lafayette Parish during August 2016.
13
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
the drainage system in Lafayette Parish is mostly (above 88%) built
with roadside open ditches and coulees and only a small portion
(around 12%) of the urban areas are designed with subsurface drains,
which are also eventually connected to the nearest open ditches or
coulees (LCG, 2018). This means that most of the surface runoffs during
flooding seasons are likely to flow into the open ditches or coulees as
the subsurface drains are only capable of holding surface water for
small regions. Therefore, the capability of these subsurface drains in
terms of discharging surface water may be negligible as here we focus
on the entire parish of Lafayette rather than a small region. Thus, we
will not consider the street drains connecting to these subsurface drains
in this application (i.e., we assume that there are no street drains for all
urban grid cells). Another reason that we do not consider the street
drains is that there are no publicly-available data for the locations of
street drains in Lafayette Parish.
We also need to collect observational data for the 2016 flood in
Lafayette Parish to validate the performance of the proposed model. As
the heavy rainfalls in Lafayette Parish occurred on August 12 and 13,
2016, we will use the proposed model to simulate the flood extent and
depth after August 13. We therefore should collect the observed data for
flood extent and depth recorded on August 14, 2016. Due to the limited
data availability for the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish, here we will
estimate the flood depths for four flooded regions in Lafayette Parish
based on some aerial videos recorded by private drones on August 13
and 14 (see Fig. 13). For each aerial video, we first need to find the
border of a flooded region in the video as the water elevation of this
region should be the same as the land elevation of any points on the
border. As the land elevation is already known (see Fig. 11), the water
elevation for this flooded region can be obtained. Then, the difference
between water elevation and land elevation for any locations within the
flooded region can be regarded as the flood depth. The areas with po-
sitive flood depth can thus be used to represent the flood extent. The
estimated water elevations for the four flooded regions in Lafayette
Parish are shown in Fig. 13. For each labeled point in Fig. 13, we as-
sume that the water elevation of its surrounding area, within a radius of
1 km, is equal to that of the labeled point, as the water appears still in
the aerial videos. Thus, we can derive the flood extent and depth within
the 1 km circular area of each labeled point in Fig. 13 and the results are
shown in Fig. 14. Note that the circular areas of West Pinhook Road and
Rotary Point partially overlap. The water elevation for the overlapped
area is replaced by the average of the water elevations at these two
points. Besides, water depths less than 10 mm above ground are usually
not regarded as flooded and thus not considered in this study for esti-
mating flood extent. It is also worthwhile to mention that the estimated
flood extent and depth based on the above assumption might be unable
to capture the floods of some regions where local pits exist. For ex-
ample, an empty outdoor swimming pool at the top of a mountain can
be filled with water during a heavy precipitation event; however, the
above estimation method is unable to reflect this as the mountain’s
X. Wang, et al. Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984

Fig. 13. Four flooded regions in Lafayette Parish recorded by aerial videos. (a) this aerial photo is derived from a YouTube video recorded by Chris Blanchard on
August 13, 2016 (“Flooded Hotels & Outback Steak House Lafayette”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grbzq3f3Mvo); (b) this aerial photo is derived from a
YouTube video recorded by Ray Broussard on August 14, 2016 (“Lafayette, Louisiana 2016 flood - Vermillion River near Rotary Point”, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=kAJq5rjmv6U); (c) this aerial photo is derived from a YouTube video recorded by Chris Blanchard on August 14, 2016 (“The Highlands Apt's on Kaliste
Saloom near E Broussard Rd Lafayette LA”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnf7m50xK8); and (d) this aerial photo is derived from a YouTube video recorded
by Gino Perez on August 13, 2016 (“Drone Video of flooding in Lafayette LA”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNJMjZH6tGE).

elevation is often higher than the water elevation of observed flooded
regions. It is thus very important to keep in mind that the flood maps
displayed in Fig. 14 only represent the local flood extent surrounding
the reported points in Fig. 13. In other words, some non-flooded areas
with local pits might also be flooded in reality.
3.3. Results and discussions
In order to test the performance of the proposed model in simulating
the flood extent and depth of the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish, we run
the model over the entire parish with four spatial resolutions (1000 m,

Fig. 14. Observed flood extents and depths at four flooded regions in Lafayette Parish. Note that water depths less than 10 mm are not displayed in the flood extent
maps; the spatial resolution of the DEM data here is 5 m, therefore the estimated flood extents and depths also have the same resolution; the observed flood depth
here is computed as the difference between the observed water elevation and the elevation recorded in the Lidar-based DEM dataset, this is to keep consistent with
the simulated flood depth which also indicates the water depth above the Lidar-recorded elevation.

14
X. Wang, et al.
500 m, 100 m, and 50 m). The parameters related to land cover and soil
texture in this case study are kept fixed as given in Tables 1 and 2. Note
that the values for these parameters (i.e., CD , , and ) can be adjusted
accordingly as long as they are within the corresponding ranges. The
purpose here is to test whether the proposed model can reasonably
reproduce the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish with the default para-
meters, while results with different spatial resolutions are used to help
find a threshold of the spatial resolution at which the model can gen-
erate reasonable simulations. According to the CFL condition, the
computational time steps for these four model resolutions (i.e., 1000 m,
500 m, 100 m, and 50 m) are set as 60 s, 60 s, 30 s, and 15 s, respec-
tively. Note that the time steps for the 1000 m and 500 m model runs
could be larger as determined by the CFL condition, but here we use
60 s to allow better representation of the quick evolution of urban
floods under heavy precipitation. In general, higher spatial resolutions
usually result in higher computational requirements. Thus, it is neces-
sary to find a tradeoff between high computation requirements and
reliable simulation results. This is especially important for real-time
flooding prediction and warning which requires as much lead time as
possible for evacuation preparation. The selection of model spatial re-
solution is usually based on the following factors: 1) the ability in
capturing the geographical characteristics of the study area; 2) the
available resolutions of the input data (such as, DEM, land cover/use,
soil texture, groundwater, and soil moisture); 3) the computational
requirements as determined by the total number of grid cells and the
modeling time step.
The simulations for the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish with four
spatial resolutions are shown in Fig. 15. It can be clearly seen that the
spatial patterns of flooded regions with water depth higher than 1 m
can be well captured when the model resolution increases from 1000 m
to 100 m. This is especially true for the Vermilion River where the flood
depths can reach 3 m or even higher. However, when the model re-
solution is further improved from 100 m to 50 m, we do not see
Fig. 15. Simulated flood depths for the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish with four grid resolutions: (a) 1000 m, (b) 500 m, (c) 100 m, and (d) 50 m.
15
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
apparent improvements in terms of capturing flooding spatial patterns
for the entire parish of Lafayette. However, as the model resolution is
changed from 100 m to 50 m, the total number of grid cells within the
domain will increase by four times. Thus, the required computational
time and storage will become at least fourfold. This may suggest that
100 m is probably a reasonable spatial resolution for the proposed
model to generate acceptable simulations. Recent studies suggest that
model performance increases with decreasing spatial scales (i.e., im-
proved model resolutions) (Ichiba et al., 2018). However, if we con-
tinue to improve the model resolution after a certain point, no apparent
improvement or even a possible decline in model performance will be
expected. This is mainly because most of the input data (such as land
cover and soil type) are not available at higher resolutions (Ichiba et al.,
2018).
In order to further investigate the effects of model spatial resolution,
we extract the simulated flood depths with four resolutions at the four
flooded regions in Lafayette Parish and compare them to the observed
flood depths (see Fig. 16). Note that the observed flood depths are es-
timated with the 5 m Lidar-based DEM dataset, thus the spatial re-
solution of observed flood depths can also be regarded as 5 m. As shown
in Fig. 16, the simulations with resolutions of 1000 m and 500 m are
unable to capture the spatial variations of flood depths because of their
coarse resolutions. When the model resolution is refined to 100 m, the
spatial patterns of flooded areas in the observations are generally re-
flected in the simulations. If the resolution is further increased from
100 m to 50 m, the spatial variations of flood depths are represented
with more details. This is particularly true for some areas which contain
local pits (low areas) and are not directly connected to the river. The
flood depths for these areas are not displayed in the observations due to
the abovementioned limitations of our estimate methods. However,
most of them are well represented by the 50 m simulations. In general,
it is reasonable to believe that model simulations with higher resolu-
tions (e.g., 25 m, 10 m, or even 5 m) should be more capable of
X. Wang, et al.
Fig. 16. Comparison of flood depth between model simulations and observations at four flooded areas in Lafayette Parish. Note that the background gray layer
represents local elevations with a resolution of 5 m.
reflecting the spatial variations of local flood depths as displayed in the
observations. However, we should note that model simulations with
finer resolutions will lead to substantially increased computational re-
quirements; meanwhile, the performance in local flooding simulation
may not be significantly improved. It is thus important to seek a balance
point between model performance and computational requirements.
In order to quantify the performance improvement of the 50 m
model simulations relative to the 100 m simulations, here we compare
these two simulations from three aspects: 1) the performance in cap-
turing the observed flood extent; 2) the ability of reproducing the ob-
served flood depths; and 3) the capability of simulating the reversed
flow in Vermilion River. As for the simulated flood extent, we only
consider the grid cells with water depth greater than 10 mm. The si-
mulated flood extent from each resolution setting is first overlapped
with the observed flood extent. The overlapped area is regarded as the
captured flood extent by the given model simulations. The percentage
of the capture flood extent to the observed flood extent is defined as the
capture rate (see Fig. 17). We can thus use the capture rate to determine
which model (i.e., 100 m or 50 m) has a better performance in cap-
turing the observed flood extent. As shown in Fig. 16, the 100 m model
simulations present relatively higher capture rates in all four flooded
16
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
regions than the 50 m model simulations, suggesting that the 100 m
model simulations perform better in capturing the observed flood ex-
tent. For example, the capture rates of the 100 m model at three eval-
uated locations (West Pinhook Road and Rotary Point, Kaliste Saloom
Road, and Middleburg Drive) are 96.8%, 89.3%, and 83.9%, respec-
tively; in contrast, the capture rates of the 50 m model at these three
locations all decrease slightly (i.e., 95.7%, 84.8%, and 78.2%). This is
because the 100 m model is spatially constructed with bigger grid cells
than the 50 m model and is thus likely to generate larger flood extent. In
general, coarse resolutions enable the model to better capture the ob-
served flood extent but degrade its ability of capturing the spatial
variations of local flood extent. Therefore, the above comparison only
suggests that the 100 m simulations are comparable to the 50 m ones
while the slightly improved capture rates in the 100 m simulations can
be attributed to their larger grid cells.
Due to the mismatch of spatial resolutions (i.e., 100 m and 50 m
simulations and 5 m observations), the ability of reproducing the ob-
served flood depths is evaluated through comparisons of the histograms
and general statistics (mean, maximum, and standard deviation) of
flood depths. Although we could use spatial interpolation methods to
regrid the simulations (or observations) to match the resolution of
X. Wang, et al. Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984

Fig. 17. Comparison of flood extend between model simulations (with two resolutions: 100 m and 50 m) and observations at four flooded areas in Lafayette Parish.

Fig. 18. Comparisons of flood depth histograms between model simulations and observations. Note that only those grid cells within the captured areas shown in
Fig. 17 are considered for generating these histograms.

observations (or simulations) in order to perform grid-by-grid com- individual grid cells are avoided here. Besides, only those grid cells
parisons, this would inevitably introduce some errors or uncertainties within the captured areas shown in Fig. 17 are considered to avoid
associated with the interpolation methods. Therefore, comparisons at introducing any errors caused by the abovementioned estimation

17
X. Wang, et al.
Table 3
Comparisons of flood depth statistics between model simulations and observations. Note that only those grid cells within the captured areas shown in Fig. 16 are
considered for calculating the following statistics.
(a) West Pinhook Road & (b) Rotary Point
Mean Max SD*
100 m Observed 2085.7 4876.8 1656.1
Simulated 3367.1 6635.5 1511.2
Relative bias** 61.4% 36.1% −8.8%
50 m Observed 2056.3 4876.8 1645.2
Simulated 3374.8 7055.9 1606.0
Relative Bias 64.1% 44.7% −2.4%
* SD is the short for standard deviation.
** Relative bias is calculated by: [(Simulated - Observed) / Observed] * 100%.
method for observed flood depth. Comparisons of flood depth histo-
grams between simulations and observations are shown in Fig. 18,
while the comparisons of general statistics are listed in Table 3. It ap-
pears that both the 100 m and 50 m simulations are likely to over-
estimate the flood depths observed in the regions near the main channel
of the Vermilion River (i.e., West Pinhook Road and Rotary Point). In
contrast, both model simulations are likely to underestimate the ob-
served water depths in the regions near the tributaries of the Vermilion
River (i.e., Kaliste Saloom Road and Middleburg Drive). This is prob-
ably because the Lidar-based DEM used to drive our model was col-
lected many years ago (during 2000 and 2004). When we use this DEM
dataset to simulate the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish, we have to as-
sume that the water levels of all water bodies just prior to the 2016
flood are exactly the same as those recorded by the earlier DEM dataset.
This assumption is unlikely to hold in many locations as their water
levels can vary significantly with time due to the combined effects of
many factors, such as baseflow from groundwater, precipitation, and
evaporation. Therefore, our model’s underestimation of the observed
flood depths in the main channel of Vermilion River may indicate that
the water level in the main stream of the Vermilion River before the
2016 flood was higher than the water level recorded in the earlier DEM
dataset, while the overestimation of observed flood depths in its tri-
butaries suggests that their water levels before the 2016 flood are lower
than the Lidar-recorded values. However, we should note that there
might be other reasons leading to the modeling error in urban flood
simulations, such as the spatial mismatch of input data for DEM and
land cover, the errors introduced by spatial interpolation, and the
mismatch between rainfall input resolution and model resolution
(Ichiba et al., 2018). Particularly, the point observations of rainfall at
one weather station are used as input to drive our flood model, im-
plying an assumption that there are no spatial or temporal variations in
rainfall over the entire study area throughout the two-day event. This is
a limitation of the case study which might somehow contribute to the
model bias in simulating the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish.
In order to quantify the abovementioned systematic biases (i.e.,
underestimation or overestimation), we calculate a relative bias defined
as a percentage of the difference between simulations and observations
to the observed values (see Table 3). Through the comparisons of three
general statistics (mean, maximum, and standard deviation) between
simulated and observed flood depths, we notice that the systematic
biases in simulating the mean values of flood depths are further en-
larged after the spatial resolution is refined from 100 m to 50 m. For
example, the 100 m model shows a positive bias (61.4%) in simulating
the average flood depth at the location near West Pinhook Road and
Rotary Point; this positive bias is slightly enlarged to 64.1% by the 50 m
model. In contrast, the 100 m model presents negative biases at other
two locations (i.e., −10.4% near Kaliste Saloom Road and −6.7% near
Middleburg Drive); these negative biases are further amplified to
−15.8% and −37.1% by the 50 m model. Since the land and soil re-
lated parameters here are fixed as their default values, this suggests that
18
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
(c) Kaliste Saloom Road (d) Middleburg Drive
Mean Max SD Mean Max SD
1512.3 4876.8 1163.1 960.0 5791.2 707.9
1354.9 2719.0 632.5 895.8 2396.1 472.0
−10.4% −44.2% −45.6% −6.7% −58.6% −33.3%
1549.9 4876.8 1182.5 1023.5 5791.2 730.4
1305.4 3247.6 801.5 644.1 2417.1 430.9
−15.8% −33.4% −32.2% −37.1% −58.3% −41.0%
these parameters should be adjusted through effective calibration be-
fore the model resolution is further increased; otherwise, the model
biases are likely to be further magnified. As mentioned above, these
systematic biases are very likely caused by the inappropriateness of
using the Lidar-based water levels to estimate the initial water levels
before the heavy rainfall. Therefore, more accurate estimations of the
initial water levels in the Vermilion River and its tributaries should be
obtained and used to drive high-resolution model simulations in order
to minimize the amplification of systematic biases. Accurate observa-
tions or estimations can usually be obtained with unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs) or field measurement before heavy precipitation is
approaching. Thus, the accuracy of predicting the expected flood ex-
tend and depth can be improved significantly. Nevertheless, we do
notice some improvements after the model resolution is increased from
100 m to 50 m. For example, the 50 m model performs better in re-
producing the standard deviations of observed flood depths in several
regions. In detail, the relative bias for the standard deviation of flood
depth at the location near West Pinhook Road and Rotary Point is im-
proved from −8.8% to −2.4%, while the location near Kaliste Saloom
Road presents an improvement from −45.6% to −32.2%. This further
confirms that model runs with higher spatial resolutions are more
capable of capturing the spatial variations of local flood depth. In
general, given that the model parameters are properly calibrated, high-
resolution simulations are expected to produce more reasonable results.
Finally, in order to compare the model’s capability of simulating the
reversed flow in Vermilion River, we use the simulated outflow direc-
tion and velocity from the 100 m and 50 m model runs to construct two
vector maps (shown in Fig. 19). As the reverse-flow phenomenon in the
Vermilion River is usually observed near the Rotary Point (see Fig. 11),
here we mainly focus on the comparisons of the reverse-flow direction
at this location simulated by these two model runs (i.e., 100 m and
50 m). As shown in Fig. 19, both the 100 m and 50 m model runs can
reasonably simulate the reverse-flow phenomenon in the Vermilion
River near Rotary Point. However, the 50 m model apparently performs
better in terms of reproducing the more detailed eddies in the river
channel due to the mixing of surface runoff from different directions.
In the above analyses, we have evaluated the performance of our
proposed model in simulating the flood depth, flood extent, and re-
verse-flow phenomenon in Lafayette Parish during the 2016 Louisiana
Flood. It is worth to mention that the USGS has conducted an in-depth
study for the 2016 Louisiana Flood with a flood inundation model
(Watson et al., 2017). Here we should note that the inundation map
generated by USGS is only limited to those low-lying areas close to the
main river channel as all inundation models are intended for simulating
river floods. In comparison, our model can create a flood map for the
entire domain with a reasonable representation of all low-lying areas no
matter whether or not they are close to the main river channel. As for
the flood depths, the USGS reported that the depths of water at those
high-water marks ranged from 0.7 to 6.8 ft aboveground (approxi-
mately, 213–2073 mm). In comparison, the simulated flood depths in
X. Wang, et al.
Fig. 19. Simulated reverse-flow phenomenon near the Rotary Point in the Vermilion River. Note that dark arrow represents the direction of surface flow and the size
of the arrow reflects the velocity of surface flow; red arrows represent the direction of reversed flow while green arrows indicate the direction of normal flow. The
background blue-green layer represents local elevations with a resolution of 5 m.
the Vermilion River by our model seem to be slightly higher than the
USGS results (see Figs. 15 and 16). However, since those high-water
marks in the USGS results are usually placed in the riverside rather than
in the middle of river channel. It is reasonable to believe that the flood
depths in the Vermilion River should be slightly higher the reported
range by USGS. In other words, our model performs reasonably well in
simulating the flood depths as reported by USGS. In addition, the USGS
study reported that flow direction of the Vermilion River in the La-
fayette Area can reverse because of the large area of urbanization (even
though their flood inundation model was incapable of reflecting this
reverse-flow effect). In comparison, such a reverse-flow effect can be
successfully captured by our model. Particularly, the reverse-flow effect
near the Rotary Point in Vermilion River has been widely reported. As
shown in Fig. 19, our model can perfectly capture the reverse-flow
phenomenon at the Rotary Point.
19
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
4. Conclusions
In this study, a new numerical model is developed to bridge the
research gap in urban flooding prediction under heavy precipitation.
The developed divides the study domain into many grid cells without
any limitation on the spatial resolution of the grid cell as long as the
DEM data of the same resolution are available. It can simulate both
horizontal surface runoff and vertical water flow simultaneously in each
time step of model simulation. This makes the model capable of re-
flecting the frequent inflow or outflow interactions among grid cells
and capturing the rapid generation of surface runoff in urban areas
during heavy rainfall. The model can also account for typical char-
acteristics of urban areas, such as large-scale impermeable surfaces and
urban drainage systems. More importantly, the model uses both the
surface elevation and instantaneous surface water depth to dynamically
X. Wang, et al.
determine the directions of horizontal inflow and outflow for each grid
cell during each time step of model simulation; this enables the model
to capture the reverse-flow phenomenon which is commonly seen in flat
urban areas during heavy storms.
In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model in
predicting real-world flooding events, we have applied it to reproduce
the 2016 flood in Lafayette Parish. The model is run at four spatial
resolutions to help find a threshold in model resolution at which the
model can generate reasonable simulations. The results show that the
model simulations at 1000 m and 500 m are unable to reproduce the
flooded regions and their spatial distributions because of their coarse
resolutions. This further confirms that conventional hydrological
models with spatial resolutions greater than 1 km are not suitable for
urban flooding simulation. However, if the model resolution is refined
to 100 m, the spatial patterns of flooded areas in the observations start
to show up in the simulations, suggesting that 100 m is probably a
reasonable spatial resolution for the proposed model to generate ac-
ceptable simulations. When the model resolution is further improved
from 100 m to 50 m, we do not see apparent improvements in terms of
capturing the large-scale flooding patterns; but our results do show that
the spatial variations of flood depths can be better represented with
more details. This is particularly true for some areas which contain local
pits and are not directly connected to river channels. In addition, the
model simulations at 100 m and 50 m are both capable of reproducing
the reverse-flow phenomenon observed in the study area; however, the
model simulation with a higher resolution apparently performs better
in terms of reproducing the more detailed eddies in river channels due
to the mixing of surface runoff from different directions.
In general, it is reasonable to believe that model simulations with
higher resolutions should be more capable of reflecting the spatial
variations of local flood depths as displayed in the observations.
However, we should note that model simulations with finer resolutions
will lead to substantially increased computational requirements;
meanwhile, the performance in local flooding simulation may not be
significantly improved. It is thus important to seek a balance point
between model performance and computational requirements in prac-
tical applications. This is especially important for real-time flooding
prediction and warning which requires as much lead time as possible
for evacuation preparation. In addition, we should note that default
values for model parameters (given in Tables 1 and 2) related to land
cover and soil texture are used in the case study because our purpose is
to test whether the proposed model can reasonably reproduce the 2016
flood in Lafayette Parish with default settings. It is a limitation of our
case study as a properly-calibrated model might produce even better
simulations. In practice, the values for these parameters (i.e., CD , , and
) can be adjusted accordingly as long as they are within the corre-
sponding ranges. Further studies on the model sensitivity to these
parameters should be conducted to better facilitate the selection of
appropriate values for different applications. It also should be noted
that, although the proposed model in this study uses square grid cells of
same size to discretize the continuous land surface, the key idea of the
model can be potentially applied to other types of grids (e.g., triangle or
hexagon) to allow for variable grid size. However, the numerical im-
plementation of most equations in this study is based upon the as-
sumption of square grid cells; appropriate modifications to their nu-
merical implementation are thus required for other types of grids. Last
but not least, although the proposed model here is intended for urban
flooding prediction, it can also be applied for modeling floods in rural
areas or natural watersheds where no adjustment to infiltration rate is
required.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
20
Journal of Hydrology 577 (2019) 123984
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by University of Prince Edward Island
and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
The 5 m DEM data for Lafayette Parish are available for public access
through Louisiana Atlas GIS Platform (https://maps.ga.lsu.edu/
lidar2000/). The land cover data (i.e., NLCD 2011) are available for
public access at https://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2011.php. The soil texture
data (i.e., SSURGO) are available for public access at: https://
websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/WebSoilSurvey.aspx. The data
for groundwater level of Lafayette Parish are derived from the National
Water Information System (NWIS) which is accessible via the USGS
Water Data Web Interface (https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis). The
precipitation data for Lafayette Parish during the 2016 flood are
available for public access at: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/.
The data for soil moisture content are obtained from the National
Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) which is available for
public access at: https://www.drought.gov/drought/data-gallery/soil-
moisture.
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