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Flood
From Noah's Biblical deluge to the China floods of 1931 that killed more than 3 million people; and from the broken levees in New Orleans to submerged streets and homes all over Britain, floods have always been an unwelcome companion of humanity. They have many causes: rain, melting ice, storms, tsunamis and the failures of dams and dikes. They have been used as deliberate acts of war causing thousands of casualties and have often been seen as punishments visited by vengeful gods. Flooding kills more people than any other type of natural disaster. This cultural and natural history of floods tells of the deadliest floods the world has seen, while also exploring the role of the deluge in religion, mythology, literature and art. Flood describes how aspects of floods - the power of nature, human drama, altered landscapes - have fascinated artists, novelists and film-makers. It examines the ancient, catastrophic deluge that appears in many religions and cultures, and considers how the flood has become a key icon in world literatures and a favourite component of disaster movies. John Withington also relates how some of the most ambitious structures ever built by humans have been designed to protect us against these merciless encroaching waters, and discusses the increasing danger floods pose in a future beset by the effects of climate change. Filled with illustrations, Flood offers a fascinating overview of our relationship with one of humanity's oldest and deadliest foes. -- Provided by publisher.
Book
The great flood : travels through a sodden landscape
Flooding has always threatened the rainy, wind-swept islands of the United Kingdom, but it is becoming more frequent and more severe. During the course of two years, which coincided with the record-breaking floods of the winter of 2013-14, Edward Platt travelled around the country, visiting places that had flooded and meeting the people affected. He visited flooded villages and towns and expanses of marsh and Fen threatened by the winter storms, and travelled along the edge of the drowned plain that used to connect Britain to continental Europe. He met people struggling to stop their houses falling into the sea and others whose homes had been engulfed. He investigated disasters natural and man-made, and heard about the conflicting attitudes towards those charged with preventing them. Combining travel writing and reportage with readings of history, literature and myth, Platt explores the way floods have shaped the physical landscape of Britain and left their mark on its inhabitants. The Great Flood dramatizes the experience of being flooded and considers what will happen as the planet warms and the waters rise, illuminating the reality behind the statistics and headlines that we all too often ignore.
Book
Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods
Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere
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. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe
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. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe
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, because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results—arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far—suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century
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,
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, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management.
Analysis of a comprehensive European flood dataset reveals regional changes in river flood discharges in the past five decades that are consistent with models suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening.
Journal Article
Urban Flood Mapping Using SAR Intensity and Interferometric Coherence via Bayesian Network Fusion
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) observations are widely used in emergency response for flood mapping and monitoring. However, the current operational services are mainly focused on flood in rural areas and flooded urban areas are less considered. In practice, urban flood mapping is challenging due to the complicated backscattering mechanisms in urban environments and in addition to SAR intensity other information is required. This paper introduces an unsupervised method for flood detection in urban areas by synergistically using SAR intensity and interferometric coherence under the Bayesian network fusion framework. It leverages multi-temporal intensity and coherence conjunctively to extract flood information of varying flooded landscapes. The proposed method is tested on the Houston (US) 2017 flood event with Sentinel-1 data and Joso (Japan) 2015 flood event with ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 data. The flood maps produced by the fusion of intensity and coherence and intensity alone are validated by comparison against high-resolution aerial photographs. The results show an overall accuracy of 94.5% (93.7%) and a kappa coefficient of 0.68 (0.60) for the Houston case, and an overall accuracy of 89.6% (86.0%) and a kappa coefficient of 0.72 (0.61) for the Joso case with the fusion of intensity and coherence (only intensity). The experiments demonstrate that coherence provides valuable information in addition to intensity in urban flood mapping and the proposed method could be a useful tool for urban flood mapping tasks.
Journal Article
Floods
Uses diagrams, maps, photos, and a time line to describe facts about floods including causes of flooding, floods' effects on human society, and ways people try to prevent flooding.
Book
Estimating Post‐Fire Flood Infrastructure Clogging and Overtopping Hazards
Cycles of wildfire and rainfall produce sediment‐laden floods that pose a hazard to development and may clog or overtop protective infrastructure, including debris basins and flood channels. The compound, post‐fire flood hazards associated with infrastructure overtopping and clogging are challenging to estimate due to the need to account for interactions between sequences of wildfire and storm events and their impact on flood control infrastructure over time. Here we present data sources and calibration methods to estimate infrastructure clogging and channel overtopping hazards on a catchment‐by‐catchment basis using the Post‐Fire Flood Hazard Model (PF2HazMo), a stochastic modeling approach that utilizes continuous simulation to resolve the effects of antecedent conditions and system memory. Publicly available data sources provide parameter ranges needed for stochastic modeling, and several performance measures are considered for model calibration. With application to three catchments in southern California, we show that PF2HazMo predicts the median of the simulated distribution of peak bulked flows within the 95% confidence interval of observed flows, with an order of magnitude range in bulked flow estimates depending on the performance measure used for calibration. Using infrastructure overtopping data from a post‐fire wet season, we show that PF2HazMo accurately predicts the number of flood channel exceedances. Model applications to individual watersheds reveal where infrastructure is undersized to contain present‐day and future overtopping hazards based on current design standards. Model limitations and sources of uncertainty are also discussed.
Plain Language Summary
Communities at the foot of the mountains face an especially dangerous type of flooding called “sediment‐laden floods.” Many such communities in the southwestern U.S. are protected from water floods by flood infrastructure designed to trap sediment at the mouth of mountain canyons and convey only water flows safely past developed areas to a downstream water body. Sediment‐laden floods, which are more forceful and typically larger than water floods, are more likely to happen during storms over burned mountain canyons soon after a wildfire occurs. However, estimating the likelihood that sediment‐laden floods fill and overtop flood infrastructure is challenging since existing sediment‐laden flood models do not explicitly consider the role of flood infrastructure. Here we present the Post‐Fire Flood Hazard Model (PF2HazMo), a model that can estimate the likelihood of post‐fire floods on a canyon‐by‐canyon basis accounting for flood infrastructure. Environmental data collected following a major wildfire is used to apply PF2HazMo to three mountain canyons in southern California, and we find that it predicts the number of floods accurately relative to observed post‐fire flood channel overtopping events. Further, the model is used to predict the frequency of floods due to infrastructure overtopping under both present‐day and future wildfire scenarios.
Key Points
Flood risks are heightened by clogging of infrastructure with sediment, which can occur from sequences of storms especially after wildfires
A framework for calibration and validation of a post‐fire infrastructure clogging and flood hazard model is presented
Model applications reveal whether infrastructure is adequately sized to meet design levels of protection
Journal Article
Ted Cruz: ‘This is not a time for partisan finger-pointing’
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on July 7 that there would be a “reasonable conversation” about detecting flash floods earlier and improving evacuation procedures.
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