Spectrum of storm event hydrologic response in urban watersheds

Smith, Brianne; Smith, James A.; Baeck, Mary Lynn; Villarini, Gabriele; Wright, Daniel B.

doi:10.1002/wrcr.20223

Cited by 77 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

106

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The lowest flow variability is found for the most urbanized basin (size 31.5 km 2 ), which suggests a smoothing effect of imperviousness on flow variability. Similar results were found by other authors and were attributed to the effect of constraints in the drainage network (Smith and Smith, 2015;Ten Veldhuis and Schleiss, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…This is the case in particular for urban catchments where strong variability in land-use, high degree of imperviousness and the presence of stormwater drainage and detention infrastructure increase the complexity of hydrological response (e.g. Bruni et al, 2015;Fletcher et al, 2013;Meierdiercks et al, 2010;Smith et al, 2005Smith et al, , 2013aYang et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, several studies have found mixed effects of urban-ization on peak flows and response times, associated with a combination of imperviousness and flood mitigation measures, especially for basins where urbanization has predominantly taken place after implementation of stormwater control legislation (e.g. Smith et al, 2013a;Hopkins et al, 2015;Miller et al, 2014). Niemczynowicz (1999) and Schilling (1991) pointed out the importance of spatially distributed rainfall information at high resolution to study response in urban basins.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The role of storm scale, position and movement in controlling urban flood response

Veldhuis

Zhou

Yang

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The impact of spatial and temporal variability of rainfall on hydrological response remains poorly understood, in particular in urban catchments due to their strong variability in land use, a high degree of imperviousness and the presence of stormwater infrastructure. In this study, we analyze the effect of storm scale, position and movement in relation to basin scale and flow-path network structure on urban hydrological response. A catalog of 279 peak events was extracted from a high-quality observational dataset covering 15 years of flow observations and radar rainfall data for five (semi)urbanized basins ranging from 7.0 to 111.1 km 2 in size. Results showed that the largest peak flows in the event catalog were associated with storm core scales exceeding basin scale, for all except the largest basin. Spatial scale of flood-producing storm events in the smaller basins fell into two groups: storms of large spatial scales exceeding basin size or small, concentrated events, with storm core much smaller than basin size. For the majority of events, spatial rainfall variability was strongly smoothed by the flowpath network, increasingly so for larger basin size. Correlation analysis showed that position of the storm in relation to the flow-path network was significantly correlated with peak flow in the smallest and in the two more urbanized basins. Analysis of storm movement relative to the flow-path network showed that direction of storm movement, upstream or downstream relative to the flow-path network, had little influence on hydrological response. Slow-moving storms tend to be associated with higher peak flows and longer lag times. Unexpectedly, position of the storm relative to impervious cover within the basins had little effect on flow peaks. These findings show the importance of observation-based analysis in validating and improving our understanding of interactions between the spatial distribution of rainfall and catchment variability.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The role of storm scale, position and movement in controlling urban flood response

Veldhuis

Zhou

Yang

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…High-resolution topographical datasets have promoted development of more detailed and more complex numerical models for predicting flows (Gironás et al, 2010;Smith et al, 2013). However, model complexity and resolution need to be balanced with the availability and quality of rainfall input data and datasets for catchment representation (Morin et al, 2001;Rafieeinasab et al, 2015;Rico-Ramirez et al, 2015;Rafieeinasab et al, 2015;Pina et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and temporal variability of rainfall and their effects on hydrological response in urban areas – a review

Cristiano

Veldhuis

Giesen

2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

254

146

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. In urban areas, hydrological processes are characterized by high variability in space and time, making them sensitive to small-scale temporal and spatial rainfall variability. In the last decades new instruments, techniques, and methods have been developed to capture rainfall and hydrological processes at high resolution. Weather radars have been introduced to estimate high spatial and temporal rainfall variability. At the same time, new models have been proposed to reproduce hydrological response, based on smallscale representation of urban catchment spatial variability. Despite these efforts, interactions between rainfall variability, catchment heterogeneity, and hydrological response remain poorly understood. This paper presents a review of our current understanding of hydrological processes in urban environments as reported in the literature, focusing on their spatial and temporal variability aspects. We review recent findings on the effects of rainfall variability on hydrological response and identify gaps where knowledge needs to be further developed to improve our understanding of and capability to predict urban hydrological response.

show abstract

“…In particular, for small urban catchments with drainage area no more than 10 km 2 , the temporal resolution of rainfall (TRR), rather than the spatial resolution of rainfall (SRR), has larger effect on hydrodynamic modelling [5,6]. Data with high TRR contribute to urban hydrology research in many aspects, such as analysing the water balance at short time scale [7], capturing the accurate peak discharge time for flooding events [8], and reducing the uncertainty of hydrological simulation [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Temporal Resolution of Rainfall on Simulation of Urban Flood Processes

Lyu

Cao

et al. 2018

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Rainfall exhibits substantial variability, and its temporal resolution considerably affects simulation of hydrological processes. This study aims to investigate the effect of the temporal resolution of rainfall (TRR) on urban flood modeling and to explore how high TRR is required. A routing-enhanced detailed urban stormwater (REDUS) model, which has four layers and accounts for complex urban flow paths, was developed and then applied to the campus of Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. For 30 rainfall events at 1-min resolution, the rainfall accuracy index (RAI) was used to describe the discrepancy of rainfall patterns by upscaling. Through hydrodynamic modelling, the effect of TRR was quantified by the relative error of flood volume and peak in typical areas. The results show that (1) flood peak is sensitive to TRR while flood volume is generally not; (2) with lower TRR, discharge peak is underestimated, and a power function is proposed to express the relationship between the effect of TRR and the characteristics of rainfall and underlying surfaces; and (3) rainfall data of 5-min resolution for urban areas smaller than 1 km 2 , or at least 15-min resolution for larger areas, are required to constrain the relative biases of flood peak within 10%.

show abstract

Spectrum of storm event hydrologic response in urban watersheds

Cited by 77 publications

References 30 publications

The role of storm scale, position and movement in controlling urban flood response

The role of storm scale, position and movement in controlling urban flood response

Spatial and temporal variability of rainfall and their effects on hydrological response in urban areas – a review

Effect of Temporal Resolution of Rainfall on Simulation of Urban Flood Processes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About