Case Study of the Use of Remotely Sensed Data for Modeling Flood Inundation on the River Severn, U.K.
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 134, Issue 5
Abstract
A methodology for using remotely sensed data to both generate and evaluate a hydraulic model of floodplain inundation is presented for a rural case study in the United Kingdom: Upton-upon-Severn. Remotely sensed data have been processed and assembled to provide an excellent test data set for both model construction and validation. In order to assess the usefulness of the data and the issues encountered in its use, two models for floodplain inundation were constructed: one based on an industry standard one-dimensional approach and the other based on a simple two-dimensional approach. The results and their implications for the future use of remotely sensed data for predicting flood inundation are discussed. Key conclusions for the use of remotely sensed data are that care must be taken to integrate different data sources for both model construction and validation and that improvements in ground height data shift the focus in terms of model uncertainties to other sources such as boundary conditions. The differences between the two models are found to be of minor significance.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to thank the Environment Agency for England and Wales for supplying LiDAR data and the river channel bathymetry and QinetiQ Ltd. for supplying the airborne radar data. This research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom, through the provision of Grant Nos. EPSRC-GBGR/S17154, EPSRC-GBGR/S17161, and EPSRC-GBGR/S17116.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 134 • Issue 5 • May 2008
Pages: 533 - 540
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Feb 23, 2005
Accepted: Sep 4, 2007
Published online: May 1, 2008
Published in print: May 2008
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