RiverSET: A Hydraulic Model Wrapper to Facilitate Stakeholder Evaluation of Flood Mitigation Alternatives
Abstract
Extreme flooding causes loss of life and billions of dollars (USD) of damage each year around the world. With the projected effects of climate change and the predictions of increased storm frequency and intensity, it is necessary to improve upon the traditional approaches to flood hazard mitigation. Floodplain reconnection projects (e.g., berm removal, floodplain lowering, flood chute reconnection) are a green alternative to human-built structures (e.g., levees, berms, armoring) for flood hazard mitigation. Floodplain reconnection projects function to attenuate stormwater, improve channel stability, enhance flood resiliency, and restore water quality. When designing a floodplain reconnection project, planners must choose the optimal location(s) and restoration technique(s) to enhance these river-corridor functions while simultaneously considering the potential impacts to land use and the adjacent infrastructure. Planners are, therefore, in need of decision-support frameworks to help synthesize and prioritize their design choices in collaboration with stakeholders. To aid planners in their design, we have created a River Scenario Evaluation Tool (RiverSET) wrapper for a two-dimensional hydraulic model (HEC-RAS) that semi-automates the calculation of five resulting HEC-RAS evaluation parameters (depth, duration, stream power, percent time inundated, and velocity) at user defined regions of interest. RiverSET allows planners to take a more holistic approach to floodplain reconnection design by facilitating the sequential modeling of multiple floodplain reconnection scenarios to efficiently calculate and display the results of each scenario (comparing different locations and techniques within the model domain). Planners and stakeholders may then visualize the results and choose the best locations/techniques based on their project goals and concerns. To verify RiverSET, we performed a case study on the Black Creek in Vermont, USA, which included an exhaustive search of four floodplain reconnection scenarios. Results were compared considering the stakeholders contrasting project goals and concerns.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFM.H35G1117W