From Flood Land to New Urban Area: Water Adaptation History and Visions for Daodi Flood Land in the West of Beijing

Daodi Flood Land, located in Mentougou District of Beijing, is a relatively separate flood land in the lower reaches and on the east of Yonding River. This largest landscape character area in the west of Beijing along the river illustrates the history of human–water interaction and discloses the trends and problems of rural urbanization. Focusing on Daodi Flood Land, this paper expands the research on adaptation by introducing basic concepts and research framework, and reviews the research trends from spatial, temporal, and participant aspects. Considering the typical characters of the study area, this research employed participatory approaches, such as mapping and problem and solution trees, due to the lack of continuous and accurate data. Basing on literature review and field investigation on issues of floods, agricultural irrigation, and water resource utilization, water adaptive development visions for the study area were proposed from perspectives of landscape and culture. Finally, the paper further analyzes the structural relations between adaptation problems, natural and social systems, passive and active adaptations, and planned and unplanned adaptations, with the aim to provide reference for relevant studies and applications of adaptation approaches in other cases.     

Assessing direct and indirect economic impacts of a flood event through the integration of spatial and computable general equilibrium modelling

In this paper we developed and tested an integrated methodology for assessing direct and indirect economic impacts of flooding. The methodology combines a spatial analysis of the damage to the physical stock with a general economic equilibrium approach using a regionally-calibrated (to Italy) version of a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) global model. We applied the model to the 2000 Po river flood in Northern Italy. To account for the uncertainty in the induced effects on regional economies, we explored three disruption and two recovery scenarios. The results highlight that: i) the flood event produces indirect losses in the national economic system, which are a significant share of the direct losses, and ii) the methodology is able to capture both positive and negative economic effects of the disaster in different areas of the same country. The assessment of indirect impacts, in particular, is essential for a full understanding of the economic outcomes of natural disasters.     

Enhancing river model set-up for 2-D dynamic flood modelling

Flood hazard mapping is a topic of increasing interest involving several aspects in which a series of progress steps have occurred in recent years. Among these, a valuable advance has been performed in solving 2-D shallow water equations in complex topographies and in the use of high resolution topographic data. However, reliable predictions of flood-prone areas are not simply related to these two important aspects. A key element is the accurate set up of the river model. This is primarily related to the representation of the topography but also requires particular attention to the insertion of man-made structures and hydrological data within the computational domain. There is the need to use procedures able to 1) obtain a reliable computational domain, characterized by a total number of elements feasible for a common computing machine, starting from the huge amount of data provided by a LIDAR survey, 2) deal with river reach that receives significant lateral inflows, 3) insert bridges, buildings, weirs and all the structures that can interact with the flow dynamics. All these issues have large effects on the modelled water levels and flow velocities but there are very few papers in the literature on these topics in the framework of the 2-D modelling. So, in this work, attention is focused on the techniques to deal with the above-mentioned issues, showing their importance in flood mapping using two actual case studies in Southern Italy. In particular, the simulations showed in this paper highlight the presence of backwater effects, sudden and numerous changes in the flow regime, induced by the detailed river model, that underline the importance of using 2-D fully dynamic unsteady flow equations for flood mapping.     

基于一、二维耦合模型的某湿地公园水网规划与水力优化应用

湿地水网规划和设计需要考虑防洪排涝、生物栖息地构建及水资源调度等多个因素的协调,单一维度的数值模型难以解决河网、湖区及工程调度等多种模拟对象的尺度协调问题。针对某感潮河网区域生态湿地公园的规划设计,利用MIKE Flood软件,构建一、二维耦合水动力模型,就河网规模、堰顶高程控制、生物栖息地构建等目标开展计算分析,通过方案比选确定相关工程规模,并通过区域微地形调整对鱼类和禽类栖息地水动力条件进行优化,使其满足生境构建要求。该结果不仅为相关设计单位提供了工作思路,所采用的建模方法和参数选取也可为类似项目参考。     

A model for the frequency of extreme river levels based on river dynamics

A new model for predicting the frequency of extreme river levels is proposed which encapsulates physical knowledge about river dynamics. The central idea is the use of continuous time stochastic processes that use hydrological equations and ergodic theory to model extreme events, rather than relying on statistical fits of classical models to local maximum data. A simple example shows how changes in discharge characteristics change the extreme river level frequencies. Solutions are provided for special cases, and directions for more general techniques are provided.     

Evaluation of the FEH Rainfall-Runoff Method for Catchments in the UK

The Flood Estimation Handbook, which was published in 1999, has substantially replaced the Flood Studies Report for design flood estimation in the UK. Although there are substantial differences between the handbook and the report, the philosophy of the rainfall-runoff method has been retained in the handbook. However, there are differences in the equations that have been used to estimate parameters of the rainfall-runoff method.
This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of the Flood Estimation Handbook rainfall-runoff method for flood-frequency estimation, using data from eighty-eight catchments in the UK. The performance is evaluated by reference to the flood quantiles obtained from single-site frequency analysis, and comparison is made with the performance of the Flood Studies Report methodology. In general terms, the handbook over-estimates flood quantiles, with respect to (a) those estimated from observed records and (b) the report's quantiles. The paper explores the causes of these over-estimations and seeks linkages with particular catchment characteristics.     

Characterisation of acid mine drainage in a high rainfall mountain environment, New Zealand

The Stockton coal mine lies at 700-1100 m above sea level in a mountainous orographic precipitation zone on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Rainfall exceeds 6000 mm/year and arrives with frequent flood events that can deliver > 200 mm/day. Streams vary in discharges by up to two orders of magnitude over a time scale of hours. Pyritic waste rock at the mine interacts chemically with even the most intense rainfall, and almost all runoff is acidic to some degree. In the most intense rain event recorded in this study (> 10 mm/hour), dilution of acid mine drainage (AMD) occurred and pH rose from 3 to > 5 over several hours, with stream discharge at a monitoring point rising from < 0.5 to > 100 cumecs. However, most rain events of similar magnitude are less intense, longer duration, and only raise AMD pH to ~ 4 with similar high discharges. Results presented here for Stockton confirm that it is the intensity of rain events on the hourly scale, rather than the total amount of rainwater delivered to the site, that governs the amount and composition of AMD generated during flood events. Stream discharge loads of dissolved iron and aluminium range from ~ 20 to 1000 kg/hour. Dissolved sulfate and acidity loads are typically ~ 500 kg/hour but can exceed 20 tonnes/hour in rain events.First flush effects observable elsewhere around the world involving peak metal loads following dry periods or seasonal changes are not obvious at Stockton due to the high and variable rainfall environment. Dissolved Fe concentrations may be limited in runoff waters by precipitation of jarosite and schwertmannite, especially when rainfall is sufficiently intense to raise pH to 4 or higher. These minerals are widespread in the exposed waste rock on site. Likewise, precipitation of alunite may occur as pH rises in rain events, but no field evidence for this has been observed.     

Temporal variability of nitrate transport through hydrological response during flood events within a large agricultural catchment in south-west France

The temporal variability of nitrate transport was monitored continuously in a large agricultural catchment, the 1110 km² Save catchment in south-west France, from January 2007 to June 2009. The overall aim was to analyse the temporal transport of nitrate through hydrological response during flood events in the catchment. Nitrate loads and hysteresis were also analysed and the relationships between nitrate and hydro-climatological variables within flood events were determined. During the study period, 19 flood events were analysed using extensive datasets obtained by manual and automatic sampling. The maximum NO₃⁻ concentration during flood varied from 8.2 mg l⁻¹ to 41.1 mg l⁻¹ with flood discharge from 6.75 m³ s⁻¹ to 112.60 m³ s⁻¹. The annual NO₃⁻ loads in 2007 and 2008 amounted to 2514 t and 3047 t, respectively, with average specific yield of 2.5 t km⁻¹² yr⁻¹. The temporal transport of nitrate loads during different seasonal flood events varied from 12 t to 909 t. Nitrate transport during flood events amounted to 1600 t (64% of annual load; 16% of annual duration) in 2007 and 1872 t (62% of annual load; 20% of annual duration) in 2008. The level of peak discharge during flood events did not control peak nitrate concentrations, since similar nitrate peaks were produced by different peak discharges. Statistically strong correlations were found between nitrate transport and total precipitation, flood duration, peak discharge and total water yield. These four variables may be the main factors controlling nitrate export from the Save catchment. The relationship between nitrate and discharge (hysteresis patterns) investigated through flood events in this study was mainly dominated by anticlockwise behaviour.     

The Installation and Use of a Snow Pillow to Monitor Snow Water Equivalent

In February 1993, a snow pillow was installed at Widdibank Fell near Cow Green reservoir (in Upper Teesdale) to monitor snow water equivalent.
This paper describes existing snow-measurement techniques in the UK and the site-selection process and installation details for the snow pillow. Following a winter of more than 100 days with snow cover at the site, the success of the pillow in representing site and catchment snow conditions and in providing operationally useful snowmelt information for flood warning has been assessed.     

石家庄市滹沱河生态防洪规划的启示

在我国，防洪规划一般都是由水利部门编制，其主要目的在于确保排洪安全。以石家庄市滹沱河为例，探讨了多学科合作，编制科学合理的生态性的防洪规划，并分析了我国现阶段滨水地带性建设可持续发展的途径。