Development of 1D and 2D coupled model to simulate urban inundation: An application to Beijing Olympic Village

Urban inundation due to anomalous storms is a serious problem for many cities worldwide. Therefore, it is important to accurately simulate urban hydrological processes and efficiently predict the potential risks of urban floods for the improvement of drainage designs and implementation of emergency actions. However, the complexity of urban landforms and the diversity of hydraulic infrastructure pose particular challenges for the simulation and risk assessment of urban drainage processes. This study developed a methodology to comprehensively simulate inundation processes by dynamically coupling 1D and 2D hydrodynamic models. By allowing the simultaneous solution of the processes of rainfall and runoff, urban drainage, and flooding, this method can be used to estimate the potential inundation risks of any designed drainage system. Furthermore, a Geographical Information System (GIS) based platform was fully integrated with the model engine to effectively illustrate the context of the problem. The developed model was then demonstrated on the Beijing 2008 Olympic Village under the conditions of the 5-year and 50-year design storms. The sewer discharge, channel discharge, and flood propagation (inundation initiation, extent, depths, and duration) were numerically validated and analyzed. The results identified the potential inundation risks. From the study, it is found that the coupled GIS and 1D and 2D hydrodynamic models have the potential to simulate urban inundation processes, and hence efficiently predict flood risks and support cost-effective drainage design and management. It also implies promising prospects about the wide availability of high quality digital data, GIS techniques, and well-developed monitoring infrastructure to develop online urban inundation forecasts. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40601018)