Prediction of debris flows in the Korean Oship river based on climate change scenarios

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to predict the behaviour of debris flow under climate change. The behaviour of debris flow on the slope and its mechanism is evaluated through numerical simulations using the climate change scenario Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and RCP 8.5, and the developed numerical model is applied to the analysis of real areas. The results from the application of the numerical model based on climate change in this study to the Gangwon region in Korea indicated that the flow discharge and flow depth of debris flow increase drastically as the return period is longer, and the Future 2 case, a future target period, showed the largest peak value of the flow discharge of debris flow with a large value of wave amplitude on the distribution curve for the debris flow discharge. In the case of flow depth, even though the wave amplitude of flow depth slightly increased as the year increased, its distribution shared a similar tendency. The value of flow depth was high. It is expected that the results of this study will provide information necessary to predict damage due to debris flow in the climate-changing future, and to prevent damage to human life in coastal areas.