Inclusion of flood diversion canal operation in the H08 hydrological model with a case study from the Chao Phraya River basin: model development and validation

Abstract

Water diversion systems play crucial roles in assuaging flood risk by diverting and redistributing water within and among basins. For flood and drought assessments, including investigations of the effects of diversion systems on river discharge worldwide, the explicit inclusion of these systems into global hydrological models (GHMs) is essential. However, such representation remains in the pioneering stage because of complex canal operations and insufficient data. Therefore, we developed a regionalized canal operation scheme and implemented it in the H08 GHM for flood diversion in the Chao Phraya River basin (CPRB), Thailand, which is a complex river network with several natural and artificial diversion canals and has been subject to severe flooding in the past, including recent years. Region-specific validation results revealed that the enhanced H08 model with the regionalized diversion scheme could effectively simulate the observed flood diversion pattern in the CPRB. Diverted water comprises approximately 49 % of the annual average river discharge in the CPRB. The simulations further confirmed that the presented canal scheme had the potential to reduce flood risk in the basin by significantly reducing the number of flooding days. A generalized canal scheme with simple input data settings was also constructed for future global applications, providing insights into the maximum level of discharge reduction achievable with diversion of nearly 57 % of the annual average river discharge of the CPRB. Overall, the enhanced H08 model with canal schemes can be adapted and applied to different contexts and regions, accounting for the characteristics of each river network by maintaining the basic principles unaltered.