Ice-Jam Flood Risk Assessment and Hazard Mapping under Future Climate
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 146, Issue 6
Abstract
In cold-region environments, ice-jam floods (IJFs) can result in high water levels in rivers to overtop levees, leading to devastating floods. Since climatic conditions play an important role in ice-jam flooding, there is a growing concern among property developers, insurance companies, government agencies, and communities on future IJF probabilities, especially in the context of changing climate. This study presents a stochastic framework for future IJF risk assessment and hazard mapping. Future hydrological conditions derived from a physically based hydrological model (forced with meteorological inputs from the Canadian regional climate model driven by two atmospheric-ocean general circulation climate models) were coupled to a fully dynamic hydraulic river-ice model to evaluate ice-jam scenarios and subsequent backwater-level profiles for the 2041–2070 period along the Athabasca River at Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada. The modeling results show that future IJF risk will be lower and flood inundations less severe due to projected changes in climate, hydrology, and ice phenology in the 2041–2070 period compared to the baseline period of 1971–2000. However, extreme IJF events are still probable and can flood a considerable area of the town.
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Data Availability Statement
The historical hydrometric and meteorological data are available from Environment and Climate Change Canada. The model simulated data and code are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS), and the University of Saskatchewan for their funding support of this research. They are also grateful to Dr. Spyros Beltaos from Environment and Climate Change Canada for his valuable feedback and comments on a draft of the manuscript.
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 146 • Issue 6 • June 2020
Copyright
©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 12, 2019
Accepted: Sep 5, 2019
Published online: Mar 17, 2020
Published in print: Jun 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Aug 17, 2020
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