LiDAR-Derived Flood-Inundation Maps for Real-Time Flood-Mapping Applications, Tar River Basin, North Carolina

Abstract

The one-dimensional approach is reasonable for a prismatic channel in a relatively narrow floodplain but may not be appropriate for sinuous rivers with several tributaries in broad floodplains. Uncertainty in the flood-inundation polygons increases with distance from the main channel for which water-surface slopes are simulated. Two-dimensional models are increasingly used for simulating floodplain inundation because of the variability in topography across the floodplain, particularly in wide floodplains with numerous tributaries.

The Use of Lidar and Volunteered Geographic Information to Map Flood Extents and Inundation

“…Although the inundated areas are represented with a distinct boundary there is always a degree of uncertainty (Bales et al, 2007). Uncertainty for flood inundation modelling depend a number of factors including the scale of the study (resolution), ability of the model to reflect the flood behaviour and importantly, the accuracy of the DEM.…”

On the dynamics and morphology of extensive tidal mudflats: Integrating remote sensing data with an inundation model of Cook Inlet, Alaska

“…The idea of using MODIS data to improve model inundation predictions has been originally mentioned by Oey et al (2007), but the relatively low spatial resolution of MODIS (250-500 m), may not be sufficient for mapping the details of the mudflats ), so the higher resolution Landsat imagery (30-60 m) will be used here. Note that much higher resolution (and more expensive to obtain) LiDAR data are often used for water coverage studies (Bales et al 2007;Zhou 2009), but these data are not available in most of the CI area; we will however, compare in the future our Landsat (free data) analysis with high-resolution Earth Observing SPOT (Stroppiana et al 2002) data, a commercial product. It is important to find reliable images (with minimal cloud cover or ice) at different tidal stages so the water coverage is different in each image.…”

“…However, in many coastal regions, detailed high-resolution topographic data are either not available, or the land is being changed by human development or natural climatic impacts. Very high-resolution (~1 m) flood-inundation maps from airborne LiDAR data can be very useful (Bales et al 2007;Zhou 2009), but these data are costly and not easily available everywhere on the globe. Therefore, this study aims to develop new methodologies that use publicly available satellite remote sensing data to study the dynamics and morphology of flood zones that are otherwise unobserved by direct measurements (for example, mudflats are often too dangerous for making shipboard ocean measurements).…”

Flood Modeling Using a Synthesis of Multi-Platform LiDAR Data

“…HEC-RAS, which was used in this study and is available in the public domain, provides "one-dimensional steady flow, unsteady flow, sediment transport/mobile bed computations, and water temperature modeling" [53]. One-dimensional hydrodynamic modeling provides rapid, simple, but representative calculations for a network of natural and artificial streams, including the representation of manmade objects such as bridges, culverts, and weirs [40,54]. Due to a portion of the study stream reach being contained within a culvert, HEC-RAS provided the necessary methodologies to include this structure within the flood model.…”

“…From 1983 to 2003, the state of North Carolina ranked ninth in terms of the highest total flood damages and twelfth in terms of the highest damages per capita in the United States [39,40]. In the Blue Ridge Mountain Province of the Southern Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, locally intense, short duration precipitation events coupled with the built environment have produced numerous flash floods substantiating the need to better understand local flooding.…”