Flood Simulation Using Weather Forecast & Hydrological Models.

68 Pages·2015·5.14 MB·English

by  Pratiman Patel

Flood Simulation using Weather Forecasting and Hydrological
Models

Thesis submitted to the Andhra University, Visakhapatnam in partial fulfilment of
the requirement for the award of Master of Technology in Remote Sensing and GIS.

Submitted By:
Mr. Pratiman Patel

Supervised By:

Dr. Shiv Prasad Aggarwal Dr. Praveen Kumar Thakur
Head Scientist/ Engineer ‘SE’
Water Resources Department, Water Resources Department,
Indian Institute of Remote Sensing Indian Institute of Remote Sensing
Dehradun Dehradun

Indian Institute of Remote Sensing,
Indian Space Research Organnization,
Dept. of Space, Govt. of India,
Dehradun – 248001
Uttarakhand, India
June, 2015
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would first and foremost like to express my deepest sense of gratitude to our respected
director, Dr. A. Senthil Kumar, for his continuous encouraging suggestions and support
during the research which from time to time has led us to rethink and establish our goals and
objectives in a defined way. I would also like to thank Dr. Y.V.N. Krishna Murthy, former
Director, IIRS for his valuable suggestions at the time of synopsis too.
I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my supervisors Dr. Shiv Prasad
Aggarwal, Head, Water Resources Department and Dr. Praveen Kumar Thakur,
Scientist/Engineer ‘SE’, Water Resources Department, IIRS, who gave me the golden
opportunity to do this project on the topic “Flood Simulation using Weather forecasting
and Hydrological Models”, which also helped me in doing a lot of Research and I came to
know about so many new things. I am really thankful to them.
I would like to thank to Dr. Bhaskar R. Nikam, Dr. Vaibhav Garg and Mr. Arpit Chouksey
who helped in understanding various subjects during the course work. They have provided
support in various forms. Their suggestions always have been very important to me. I would
like to thank Andhra University for providing Master of Technology Degree in Remote
Sensing and GIS. Along with this, I would also like to thank Dr. S.P.S. Kushwaha, Dean
(Academics), Dr. S.K. Saha former Dean (Academics) and Ms. Shefali Agarwal, M.Tech
Course Director, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun for providing an opportunity
to do this research.
I would like to thank Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) and WRF community for
providing the HEC-HMS, HEC-GeoHMS and source code of WRF-ARW, WRF-Hydro,
MET and NCL scripts respectively. Special thanks to Central Water Commission (CWC) for
providing the discharge data of Joshimath and Uttarkashi for model calibration and validation.
I would not be withstanding the course without the help of my friends Vikrant, Surya, Ram,
Raja, Abhishek Saikia, Prakit, Sanjay, Neeraj, K.D., Sukant, Sakshi, Richa, Raunak, Rohit sir
and all others. Their friendship supported me a lot and the time with them can never be
forgotten.
Lastly my moral supporters my family, grandparents, mom, dad & prateek for their utmost
care and concern. They are real motivation to me, without them I would have never thought
of completing this project.

Date: 16 June 2015 Pratiman Patel

II
CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Mr. Pratiman Patel has carried out the dissertation entitled “Flood
simulation using weather forecasting and hydrological model” in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the award of Master of Technology in Remote Sensing and GIS. This
work has been carried out under the supervision of Dr. Shiv Prasad Aggarwal, Head, Water
Resources Department and Dr. Praveen Kumar Thakur, Scientist/Engineer ‘SE’, Water
Resources Department, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Indian Space Research
Organisation, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.

Dr. Shiv Prasad Aggarwal Dr. Praveen Kumar Thakur
Head Scientist/ Engineer ‘SE’
Water Resources Department, Water Resources Department,
Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing,
Dehradun Dehradun

Dr. S.P.S. Kushwaha Dr. A. Senthil Kumar
Dean (Academics) Director
Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing,
Dehradun Dehradun

III
DECLARATION

I, Pratiman Patel hereby declare that this dissertation entitled “Flood Simulation using
Weather forecasting and Hydrological Models” submitted to Andhra University,
Visakhapatnam in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of
Technology in Remote Sensing & GIS, is my own work and that do the best of my
knowledge and belief. It is a record of original research carried out by me under the guidance
and supervision of Dr. Shiv Prasad Aggarwal, Head, Water Resources Department and Dr.
Praveen Kumar Thakur, Scientist/Engineer ‘SE’, Water Resources Department, Indian
Institute of Remote Sensing, Indian Space Research Organisation, Dehradun. It contains no
material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial
extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of the university or
other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the
text.

Place: Dehradun Mr. Pratiman Patel
Date: 16 June 2015

IV
DEDICATED TO MY FAMILY

V
ABSTRACT
Floods are among one of the most common disaster that happen all around the world, every
year. In mountainous areas flash floods are very common phenomenon due to heavy
precipitation, cloud burst, landslide, or glacier lake outburst. In this research project, flash
floods prediction due to heavy precipitation is being simulated using a weather forecasting
model (WRF-ARW) for precipitation prediction and uncoupled hydrological model for
rainfall-runoff (HEC-HMS) and hydrodynamic (MIKE 11) modelling.
Weather forecasting model (WRF) is parameterized for land use/ land cover, topographical
data and six microphysics and cumulus schemes combinations. These parameters are used for
simulating three past events of cloud bursts i.e. 01 Aug 2012, 13 September 2012 and 13 June
2013. These parameters are validated for accuracy, probability of detection and false alarm
ratio using IMD grids of rainfall and TRMM (3B42 v7 3 hourly product). The most suitable
parameters are MODIS land use/ land cover and WRF Double Moment 6 Class Scheme with
Grell 3D as microphysics and cumulus schemes respectively.
The best output of WRF is selected for hydrological modelling. Hydrological is performed
for uncoupled and coupled models (WRF-Hydro). HEC-HMS is calibrated and validated
before using it for results obtained from WRF. The results of HEC-HMS model for WRF
outputs are compared with TRMM 3B42 v7 3-hourly product. There is a clear under
prediction and time shift of WRF outputs with the TRMM product. This effect is also
observed in the hydrodynamic model. For coupled model, the results are not satisfactory for
the current version of WRF-Hydro. The results obtained are very promising for uncoupled
mode but there is further improvement required for precipitation prediction.

Keywords: Flood forecasting, WRF, rainfall-runoff modelling, hydrodynamic modelling,
uncoupled modelling, coupled modelling.

VI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sr. No. Title Page No.
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Research questions 2
1.2 Objective 2
2. Literature Review 3
2.1 Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) 3
2.2 GIS based Hydrologic and Hydrodynamic Modelling 6
2.3 Digital Elevation Models 7
2.4 Flood 8
3. Study area and data used 10
4. Methodology 16
4.1 Model Overview 16
4.2 Overall Methodology 26
5. Results and Discussions 40
6. Conclusion and Recommendation 52
7. References 53
8. Appendix 1 56

VII
LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES
List of figures:
Figure 3.1: Map showing the study area with major rivers and important 12
locations.
12
Figure 3.2: FCC of Landsat 8 for the study area.
13
Figure 3.3: Land Use/ Land Cover of the study area.
13
Figure 3.4: Soil map of the study area.
14
Figure 3.5: CartoDEM of the study area.
14
Figure 3.6: AWiFS land use/ land cover for domain 03 of WRF.
15
Figure 3.7: MODIS land use/ land cover for domain 03 of WRF.
15
Figure 3.8: USGS land use/land cover of domain 03 for WRF.
16
Figure 4.1: ARW n coordinate
Figure 4.2: Flow diagram for WRF. 17

Figure 4.3: SCS unit hydrograph. 20
Figure 4.4: Calculation of cross-sectional area for relative roughness not
equal to 1.0. a) Highest water level above maximum specified elevation b) 23
Highest water level below maximum specified elevation
Figure 4.5 Channel section with computational grid 25
26
Figure 4.6: WRF Hydro architecture showing various components.
26
Figure 4.7: Calling structure of WRF-Hydro
27
Figure 4.8: Flowchart showing overall methodology.
28
Figure 4.9: Domain Configuration of WRF.
Figure 4.10: Geogrid description in namelist.wps for use of MODIS 29
LULC.
30
Figure 4.11: GEOGRID.TBL for SRTM DEM.
Figure 4.12: A. CARTOSAT DEM of the area. B. CN Map generated from
32
LULC & soil Map. C. Impervious Map generated from ISAT-tool. D. Initial
Abstraction Map generated from LULC & soil map.
VIII
Figure 4.13: Watershed and River network delineated from HEC- 33
GeoHMS.
33
Figure 4.14: HEC-HMS model setup.
34
Figure 4.15: Flowchart showing MIKE 11 Methodology.
35
Figure 4.16: Network File of MIKE 11.
35
Figure 4.17: Cross-section file of MIKE 11.
36
Figure 4.18: Channel grid for WRF-Hydro.
37
Figure 4.19: Flow direction grid for WRF-Hydro.
37
Figure 4.20: Land use/ Land Cover for WRF-Hydro.
38
Figure 4.21: Latitude grid for WRF-Hydro.
38
Figure 4.22: Longitude grid for WRF-Hydro.
39
Figure 4.23: Stream order grid for WRF-Hydro.
39
Figure 4.24: Topographic grid for WRF-Hydro.
Figure 5.1: USGS LULC comparison with different microphysics and 40
cumulus schemes for 17 June 2013.
Figure 5.2: MODIS LULC comparison with different microphysics and 40
cumulus schemes for 17 June 2013.
Figure 5.3: Difference image of TRMM and WRF results for USGS &
41
MODIS LULC with different microphysics and cumulus schemes for 13-
17 June 2013.
Figure 5.4: WRF model comparison for different microphysics and 42
cumulus schemes for 15 June 2013.
Figure 5.5: IMD and WRF grid difference of different microphysics and 42
cumulus schemes for 17 June 2013.
Figure 5.6: Difference images of TRMM and WRF for different 43
microphysics and cumulus schemes (1-3 Aug 2012).
Figure 5.7: Difference images of TRMM and WRF for different 43
microphysics and cumulus schemes (13-15 Sep 2012).
Figure 5.8: WRF model comparison for different microphysics and 44
cumulus schemes for 03 August 2012.
Figure 5.9: WRF model comparison for different microphysics and 44
cumulus schemes for 15 September 2012.
Figure 5.10: Hydrograph comparison of simulated and observed runoff at 45
Uttarkashi and Joshimath for year 2005.
Figure 5.11: Hydrograph comparison of simulated and observed runoff at 45
Uttarkashi and Joshimath for year 2006.
Figure 5.12: Hydrograph comparison of simulated and observed runoff at 46
Uttarkashi and Joshimath for year 2007.
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46
Figure 5.13: Hydrograph comparison of TRMM & WRF at Uttarkashi.
47
Figure 5.14: Hydrograph comparison of TRMM & WRF at Devprayag.
47
Figure 5.15: Hydrograph comparison of TRMM & WRF at Joshimath.
48
Figure 5.16: Hydrograph comparison of TRMM & WRF at Rudraprayag.
48
Figure 5.17: Hydrograph comparison of TRMM & WRF at Haridwar.
49
Figure 5.18: Hydrograph comparison for different Curve Number Values.
Figure 5.19: Stage comparison of WRF and TRMM at Uttarkashi and 50
Devprayag stations.
51
Figure 5.20: Hydrograph at Haridwar for WRF-Hydro.

List of tables:
Table 2.1: Scale definitions of some important atmospheric events. 3
Table 2.2: Major cloud bursts events in Uttarakhand in 2012 8
Table 3.1: Bands in Landsat 8. 11
Table 4.1: Combination for USGS & MODIS land use land cover 28
parameterization simulations.
Table 4.2: Combinations for full parameterization. 29
Table 5.1: Curve Number Values for sub-watershed. 49
Table A1.1: Geogrid configuration for domain. 57
Table A1.2: Time information 57
Table A1.3: Domain configuration for namelist.input 57
Table A1.4: Common physics options for all full parameter simulations. 58
Table A1.5: Common physics options for land use land cover 58
simulations.

X