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Abstract
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Intense rainfall events can trigger local flooding due to prolonged and extended ponding especially in densely urbanized areas with local flat spots. The frequency of these events is very high and therefore so is their impact on society. In certain cases (i.e., small islands) good characterization of this hazard is an important part of the global risk assessment of the area.
In the literature we find a large number of inundation models for regional or global applications, as recently this problem has catalyzed the attention of the research community, but few of them focus on local ponding effects, their primary goal being to assess riverine flood risk.
This work presents a simple ponding model developed, tested and applied in different environments, including a challenging one in the Caribbean Islands.
The model assumes that the interactions among local and far morphological features, slope, soil use and soil type allow the identification of ponding prone areas.
In the particular context of the Global Assessment Report (GAR) such a model has been of dramatic help in identifying risks in Small Islands Developing States (SIDS), which often lack of a well-organized river network and are exposed to torrential rains, such that local flooding is one of the major threats they experience with devastating problems to facilities and lifelines.
The model was at first calibrated and validated in central Italy in the area of the L'Aquila city, in a very rich data environment, and after that it was ported to the Caribbean Islands in the framework of the GAR. The model outputs probabilistic information expressed in terms of ponding Likelihood so that this information can be easily taken in a probabilistic risk analysis framework. |