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Refined Three-Dimensional River Channel Reconstruction Method Based on Coarse DEMs for Flood Simulation

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Abstract

Flood forecasts commonly require reliable input data to accurately reflect the actual situation. Although widely used in the world, the coarse digital elevation models (DEMs) from remote sensing often provide poor representations of the real topography due to the effects of water and mountain shadows. Remote sensing methods cannot reliably capture riverbed elevations, and fine-scale DEMs are needed. Due to the high cost of labor and material resource limitations, complete fine-scale DEMs are difficult to obtain to support flood forecasting across long reaches at sufficiently high precision. This work presents a refined three-dimensional river channel reconstruction method by considering the longitudinal and lateral topographic features of rivers to provide realistic river terrain data. The performance of this method in flood simulation is confirmed by simulating extreme flood events in the lower-670-km reach of the Jinsha River at a 30-m resolution. The numerical simulations and field measurements are quantitatively compared in terms of flood peaks and flood propagation processes. Numerical experiments further confirm that uncertainties from terrain inputs are not amplified by the hydrodynamic model when producing the final flood forecasting outputs.

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The data and code that support the study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52079106, 52009104); Chinesisch-Deutsches Mobilitatsprogramm (M-0427); the Shaanxi Province Innovation Talent Promotion Plan Project Technology Innovation Team (No. 2020TD-023); the Key R&D Program of Shaanxi Province (No. 2021SF-484).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Eco-Hydraulics in Northwest Arid Region of China, Xi’an University of Technology, No. 5 Jinhua Road, Xi’an, 710048, China

    Yongyong Ma, Jingming Hou, Bingyao Li, Tian Wang & Feng Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing, 100101, China

    Wei Liu

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Wei Liu

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  1. Yongyong Ma
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  6. Feng Wang
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Contributions

Conceptualization and methodology: Yongyong Ma, Jingming Hou, and Wei Liu. Writing—original draft preparation: Yongyong Ma. Material preparation, collection, and analysis: Yongyong Ma, Wei Liu, Bingyao Li, Tian Wang, and Feng Wang. Funding acquisition: Jingming Hou and Tian Wang. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jingming Hou.

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Ma, Y., Hou, J., Liu, W. et al. Refined Three-Dimensional River Channel Reconstruction Method Based on Coarse DEMs for Flood Simulation. Environ Model Assess 28, 787–802 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-023-09887-0

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