Recently, ScienceDirect, a peer reviewed academic journal that covers various scientific topics, published an article by Daniel T. Kahl, Jochen E. Schubert, Ariane Jong-Levinger, and Brett F. Sanders, all UC Irvine researchers. Their article focused on bettering the accuracy of levee resolution in response to dual-grid models that tend to cause loss of accuracy.
Important for measuring flood risk and assisting in the adaptation process to reduce flood vulnerability for various cities or towns, spatially distributed flood inundation modeling is an increasing necessity as flooding has become more and more of a danger to cities and states across the nation.
In the article, the authors sought to “improve the representation of blockage effects and levee overtopping in large-scale, dual-grid flood inundation models.” The accuracy found after applying this model to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region had a hit rate of about 91%, which is similar to other models and is about 30 times faster in real time in comparison to currently used fine grid methods. The new method will hopefully allow researchers to measure risk more accurately and assess opportunities to adapt and reduce vulnerability in the cases of flooding coming back in overwhelming ways.
If you are interested in reading the full journal article, click here.