Rainfall threshold for flash flood warning based on model output of soil moisture: Case study wernersbach, germany

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Convective rainfall can cause dangerous flash floods within less than six hours. Thus, simple approaches are required for issuing quick warnings. The flash flood guidance (FFG) approach pre-calculates rainfall levels (thresholds) potentially causing critical water levels for a specific catch-ment. Afterwards, only rainfall and soil moisture information are required to issue warnings. This study applied the principle of FFG to the Wernersbach Catchment (Germany) with excellent data coverage using the BROOK90 water budget model. The rainfall thresholds were determined for durations of 1 to 24 h, by running BROOK90 in “inverse” mode, identifying rainfall values for each duration that led to exceedance of critical discharge (fixed value). After calibrating the model based on its runoff, we ran it in hourly mode with four precipitation types and various levels of initial soil moisture for the period 1996–2010. The rainfall threshold curves showed a very high probability of detection (POD) of 91% for the 40 extracted flash flood events in the study period, however, the false alarm rate (FAR) of 56% and the critical success index (CSI) of 42% should be improved in further studies. The proposed adjusted FFG approach has the potential to provide reliable support in flash flood forecasting.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number1061
JournalWater (Switzerland)
Volume13
Issue number8
Publication statusPublished - 2 Apr 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-7489-9061/work/142249615
ORCID /0000-0003-3200-7410/work/150885285

Keywords

Keywords

  • Antecedent soil moisture, BROOK90 model, EXTRUSO project, Flash flood warning, Rainfall threshold