Development of high-resolution multi-scale modelling system for simulation of coastal-fluvial urban flooding

Abstract

Urban developments in coastal zones are often exposed to natural hazards such as flooding. In this research, a state-of-the-art, multi-scale nested flood (MSN-Flood) model is applied to simulate complex coastal-fluvial urban flooding due to combined effects of tides, surges and river discharges. Cork city on Ireland's southwest coast is a study case. The flood modelling system comprises a cascade of four dynamically linked models that resolve the hydrodynamics of Cork Harbour and/or its sub-region at four scales: 90, 30, 6 and 2m. Results demonstrate that the internalization of the nested boundary through the use of ghost cells combined with a tailored adaptive interpolation technique creates a highly dynamic moving boundary that permits flooding and drying of the nested boundary. This novel feature of MSN-Flood provides a high degree of choice regarding the location of the boundaries to the nested domain and therefore flexibility in model application. The nested MSN-Flood model through dynamic downscaling facilitates significant improvements in accuracy of model output without incurring the computational expense of high spatial resolution over the entire model domain. The urban flood model provides full characteristics of water levels and flow regimes necessary for flood hazard identification and flood risk assessment.