Improving flash flood risk assessment using a simple approach for extreme rainfall scaling and storms transposition

Abstract

Abstract Flash flood risk management is among the key topics of the European Flood Directive. Design hydrographs of small river basins could underestimate the hydraulic risk in case of intense and short‐duration events because of the intensification of hourly rainfall and the design rainfall depths uncertainty in often ungauged river basins. The use of synthetic hyetographs obtained from past observed events can be useful for a better evaluation of the flash flood hazard at the river basin scale. For this reason, a simple approach based on rainfall scaling and storms transposition of occurred events is presented to identify areas where design discharges underestimate the flash flood risk. The methodology considers the spatial distribution of the observed storms over a specific zone and the areal reduction factors to scale the observed hyetographs for different river basins extensions. Hyetographs of past observed events are used as input of a hydrological model in a set of river basins located in Northern Tuscany (Italy). The results show how peak discharges of short‐duration events are usually greater than the design floods of the small river basins with an area generally less than 30 km2.

Keywords

• extreme events
• flash floods
• hydrological modeling
• risk assessment