Effects of polders on the course of floods in the watershed of the Tichá Orlice river

Abstract

Polders show an important water-management function in the flood-control protection of watersheds. The course of actual floods in recent decades and effects of the water works on flood flows have proved the suitability of the construction within integrated flood-control measures in particular watersheds of the Czech Republic. To determine the transformation effect of flood-control measures in watersheds mathematical modelling is an important method, which is used not only in the preparation and design of retention areas but also in dealing with the flood protection of towns and villages. Easy verification of other measures in watersheds is also useful. Their implementation can be thus prepared for the future or it is possible to back off the intentions. In our case, a fact is advantageous that the model is ope­ra­ted in the workplace of the Elbe Basin water-management dispatching centre, which is compatible with assessed polders in the partial Elbe watershed, namely in the Tichá Orlice watershed and its partial Třebovka watershed. The polders assessed are situated on the Třebovka stream, which is the lar­gest tributary of the Tichá Orlice river. These dry reservoirs and the increased protective function of the Hvězda pond affect runoff from about 80 km2. Within research activities, possibilities were studied to obtain necessary retention areas in existing small water reservoirs. It became evident that the only rea­lis­tic solution was to increase protective functions of the pond Hvězda. Its present total retention space of 1.4 million m3 can be increased only by 0.35 million m3, however, in combination with the sophisticated lay-out of a new emergency spillway and outlet the whole retention space can be used much more effectively. To obtain other retention areas localities were found out in the whole upper watershed of the Třebovka stream, which fulfilled requirements for placing the adequate capacity of polders. Subsequent modifications of the Třebovka channel in the most endangered villages and towns and their capacity design according to transformation effects of selected reservoirs and measures, determination of their effect and comparison with profiles on the Tichá Orlice are the content of the paper.

Keywords

• floods
• flood-control protection
• flood transformation
• polders