1D-2D Coupling Urban Flooding Model using radar data in Bangkok City

Nor Azimah Binti Abdul Aziz

March 2006

Abstract

Urban flooding is one of the big problems in most of the cities around the world especially in developing countries like Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Thailand. Rapid developments in the cities change the land cover from fields and forest to residential and commercial area. In a developing country like Thailand, urban flood cannot just be avoided – the people must live with some degree of flooding. This is because the city grew too fast and their existing drainage system did not follow the fast development. 1D-2D coupling model is a new technique to describe the dynamics interaction between surface and underground sub-system. It does not only represent the 1D model of the underground drainage and sewer system, but also represents the flow in the street, housing areas and depression land in 2D model. This modelling approach can improve the result accuracy and can lead to better understanding and better assist in decision-making. The advance of weather radar data to provide rainfall information, when added to the urban flooding model, may give a lot of advantage especially for flood forecasting, early warning and management of real time control structure. It is because radar data cover a big area and provide rainfall intensity information without have to do the interpolation process like what have to be done when rainfall information is obtained from rain gauge stations. This study aims to apply the methodology of 1D-2D coupled urban flooding modeling to the Sukhumvit, sub-catchment of Bangkok, which has a big area and complex system. The results from simulations is used to estimate costs and damages of flood. The result is also used to generate flood risk and flood damage map in GIS environment.

Keywords: urban flooding, 1D-2D coupled model, flood damage analysis, flood risk and flood damage map

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