Climate-Adaptive Flood Risk Mapping and Forecasting under Future Scenarios Using Hydrodynamic Modeling and Remote Sensing Ref.No.SSTCRC2685
1. Introduction
Flooding is one of the most frequent and destructive natural hazards, causing significant impacts on human settlements, infrastructure, agriculture, and ecosystems. Climate change is expected to alter rainfall patterns and increase the intensity and frequency of extreme hydrological events, thereby increasing future flood risk. Therefore, there is a need to assess how flood hazards may evolve under different future climate scenarios.The proposed research aims to develop an integrated framework for climate-adaptive flood risk mapping and forecasting by combining downscaled climate projections, rainfall-runoff modeling, hydrodynamic flood propagation modeling, remote sensing, GIS, and future land-use assessment. Future flood conditions will be simulated for the years 2030, 2050, and 2100 under different climate scenarios, including RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5.
The study will quantify changes in flood extent, depth, velocity, frequency, and associated risk. It will also investigate the influence of urbanization and land-use change on future flood patterns. Hydrodynamic models such as HEC-RAS 2D, MIKE 21, and MIKE Flood will be considered, along with rainfall-runoff models such as HEC-HMS/MIKE SHE. GIS and remote sensing techniques will be used for flood hazard mapping, exposure assessment, and change detection.
The research is significant because it integrates future climate projections with hydrodynamic modeling and spatial analysis to provide a dynamic assessment of flood risk from 2030 to 2100. The results can support flood-resilient urban planning, disaster risk reduction, infrastructure planning, and climate adaptation strategies.
2. Objectives
· Quantify future flood risk (extent, depth, frequency) under different climate scenarios (e.g., RCP 4.5 & 8.5).
· Use downscaled climate models to simulate flood events for 2030, 2050, and 2100.
· Assess impacts of urbanization, land-use change, and sea-level rise on flood patterns.
· Develop flood hazard maps for zoning, planning, and resilience building.
3. Research Progress
The project is currently at the proposal and framework-development stage. The research objectives, methodological framework, climate scenarios, future time horizons, modeling approaches, and expected outputs have been identified.
The proposed workflow includes climate data collection and downscaling, rainfall-runoff simulation, hydrodynamic flood propagation modeling, future land-use forecasting, and GIS-based flood hazard and risk mapping. Potential datasets and tools, including CMIP6/CORDEX climate data, remote sensing datasets, QGIS/ArcGIS, Google Earth Engine, HEC-HMS, MIKE-based models, and HEC-RAS 2D, have been identified.
The major steps remaining are selection of the study basin, collection and preprocessing of historical hydrological, climatic, topographic, and land-use data, climate-data downscaling/bias correction, model calibration and validation, development of future rainfall and land-use scenarios, hydrodynamic simulations, flood risk assessment, and preparation of the final hazard and risk maps.
4. Required Cooperation
· Collection and sharing of historical rainfall, discharge, flood-event, and meteorological data.
· Access to downscaled climate projections and relevant CMIP6/CORDEX datasets for future scenarios.
· Processing and analysis of remote sensing data, DEMs, land-use/land-cover data, and satellite-derived flood information.
· Development and validation of rainfall-runoff and hydrodynamic models.
· Assistance with climate-model data downscaling, bias correction, and generation of future extreme rainfall scenarios.
· Development of future land-use/urbanization scenarios using remote sensing and GIS techniques.
5. Benefits
The project will provide a scientific framework for understanding the evolution of flood risk under future climate and land-use scenarios. It will help identify areas that may experience increased flood extent, depth, velocity, and frequency under different future conditions.
The research will support identification of future flood hotspots and vulnerable settlements and infrastructure. The resulting hazard and risk maps can assist planners, disaster-management authorities, and other stakeholders in flood-risk zoning, infrastructure planning, emergency preparedness, and climate adaptation.
The project will also strengthen collaboration between researchers working in hydrology, climate science, hydrodynamic modeling, remote sensing, GIS, and disaster-risk management. The developed modeling framework can potentially be adapted to other flood-prone river basins.
6. Outputs
· 3 academic research papers in peer-reviewed journals.
· Climate-scenario-based flood hazard and risk maps for 2030, 2050, and 2100, including riverine and urban flood-prone areas.
· 1 integrated GIS-based flood risk assessment framework combining climate projections, hydrodynamic modeling, remote sensing, and future land-use change.
· 1 technical report identifying future flood hotspots and recommending climate-adaptive measures for flood-risk reduction and urban planning