Human body stability in floodwaters: the 2011 flood in Brisbane CBD

Chanson, Hubert; Brown, Richard J.; McIntosh, David E.

doi:10.14264/uql.2014.48

Cited by 19 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…a dummy) for their experiments. The scaled human body strictly followed the principles of geometric, kinematic and dynamic scaling, which meant that the flow conditions were ideally similar to those in the prototype (Chanson 2004), e.g. density, drag and friction coefficient of the selected human body model were approximately equal to those of the prototype .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This highlights the importance of demographic and psychological characteristics, as they can have a significant impact on a person's response time and consequently on a person's ability to adequately react to the dangers due to flooding. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that any stability thresholds based on experimental data collected using real human test subjects could be misleading and could lead to hazardous and unsafe situations in the case of a reallife flooding (Chanson et al 2014). This being the case, the predictive ability of both methods was also validated against the experimental data of Xia et al (2014).…”

Section: Comparison With the Experimental Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flood hazard assessment for extreme flood events

2016

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Climate change is expected to result in an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. In turn, this will result in more frequent occurrences of extreme flood events, such as flash flooding and large-scale river flooding. This being the case, there is a need for more accurate flood risk assessment schemes, particularly in areas prone to extreme flooding. This study investigates what type of flood hazard assessment methods should be used for assessing the flood hazard to people caused by extreme flooding. Two flood hazard assessment criteria were tested, namely: a widely used, empirically derived method, and recently introduced, physically based and experimentally calibrated method. The two selected flood hazard assessment methods were: (1) validated against experimental data, and (2) used to assess flood hazard indices for two different extreme flood events, namely: the 2010 Kostanjevica na Krki extreme river flood and the 2007 Ž elezniki flash flood. The results obtained in this study suggest that in the areas prone to extreme flooding, the flood hazard indices should be based on using the formulae derived for a mechanics-based analysis, as these formulations consider all of the physical forces acting on a human body in floodwaters, take into account the rapid changes in the flow regime, which often occur for extreme flood events, and enable a rapid assessment of the degree of flood hazard risk in a short time period, a feature particularly important when assessing flood hazard indices for high Froude numbers flows.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Comparison With the Experimental Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flood hazard assessment for extreme flood events

2016

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“…The two remaining heights represent different stability thresholds for pedestrians in floodwaters. Recent work (Arrighi, Oumeraci, & Castelli, 2017;Chanson, Brown, & McIntosh, 2014;Milanesi, Pilotti, & Ranzi, 2015;Xia, Falconer, Wang, & Xiao, 2014) analyse the main mechanisms that can cause human instability during floods: sliding and toppling. Additionally, Milanesi et al (2015) take into account the risk of drowning due to high water depth, considering the head completely above the water surface: 1.0 m for children and 1.4 m for adults.…”

Section: Risk Mitigation Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

High‐resolution urban flood model for risk mitigation validated with records collected by the affected community

Kazimierski

Badano

2019

J Flood Risk Management

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The Dupuy catchment (Laferrere, Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires) has suffered numerous floods in recent years. The frequency and magnitude of these events, coupled with the large number of people affected, has led to some community representatives organising themselves to collect flood records, increase awareness of the problem and push for solutions and mitigating actions. That campaign inspired the study of the flooding dynamics of the catchment, with the aim of developing simple tools for risk mitigation. To analyse the water dynamics in the catchment, a high‐resolution urban numerical model was implemented with the EPA‐SWMM software. Due to the lack of systematic observations of flow variables, the model was validated using data collected by the affected community itself. More than 500 simulations of different synthetic storms were run on a high‐performance computational cluster and analysed. These processed results, coupled with the observation of rainfall intensities during an event, may be used by the community and risk managers to reduce exposure and mitigate flood risk.

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“…These could include the body shape, size, mass, balance, strength, foot size, state of mind, and body response, as well as climatic conditions (darkness, temperature, and rain) and environmental hazards (water turbidity, and debris). For an idealised situation, dimensional considerations show that the stability of an unassisted individual in floodwaters is a function of the human body's characteristics (height H, density ρ H ), fluid and physical properties (density ρ, viscosity µ, gravity acceleration g), bottom surface and slope (θ), water flow characteristics, and the type of gait [22,29]. Focusing on the most relevant factors, this yields:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability of Individuals during Urban Inundations: What Should We Learn from Field Observations?

Chanson

Brown

2018

Geosciences

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The flooding of urbanized areas constitutes a major hazard to populations and infrastructure. Flood flows during urban inundations have been studied only recently and the real-life impact of fluid flows on individuals is not well understood. The stability of individuals in floodwaters is re-assessed based upon the re-analysis of detailed field measurements during a major flood event.The results emphasized that hydrodynamic instabilities, linked to local topographic effects and debris, constitute major real-world hazards. A comparison between a number of flow conditions deemed unsafe for individuals, along with guidelines, suggests that many recommendations are over-optimistic and unsafe in real floodwaters and natural disasters. A series of more conservative guidelines is proposed, particularity relevant to flood events.

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Human body stability in floodwaters: the 2011 flood in Brisbane CBD

Cited by 19 publications

References 6 publications

Flood hazard assessment for extreme flood events

Flood hazard assessment for extreme flood events

High‐resolution urban flood model for risk mitigation validated with records collected by the affected community

Stability of Individuals during Urban Inundations: What Should We Learn from Field Observations?

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