Two-dimensional dam break flooding simulation: a GIS-embedded approach

In the twenty-first century, around 200 notable dam and reservoir failures happened worldwide causing massive fatalities and economic costs. In order to reduce the losses, managers usually define mitigation strategies identifying flooding area due to dam break by using standalone hydrodynamic models and then importing the results within a GIS to perform risk analysis. This two-step procedure is time expensive, error prone due to export/import requirements and not user friendly. For this reason with this work, a new numerical model for the solution of the two-dimensional dam break problem has been implemented in the GRASS GIS with a GIS-embedded approach. The model solves the conservative form of the 2D shallow water equations using a finite volume method; the intercell flux is computed by one-side upwind conservative scheme extended to a two-dimensional problem. The newly developed GIS module, among others outputs, allows to derive maximum intensity maps that can be directly used for risk assessment. Finally, the model has been (1) tested against two standard synthetic problems referenced in literature showing differences in estimated water depth of 2, 3 and 15% and (2) verified against official flooding map of an existing dam (Verzasca) detecting 75% of similarity. The problem formulation, the new GRASS module and its validation is presented. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012