Hydraulic Evaluation of the Levee System Evolution on the Kurobe Alluvial Fan in the 18th and 19th Centuries

The development process and flood control effects of the open-levee system, which was constructed from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries, on the Kurobe Alluvial Fan—a large alluvial fan located on the Japan Sea Coast of Japan’s main island—was evaluated using numerical flow simulation. The topography for the numerical simulation was determined from an old pictorial map in the 18th century and various maps after the 19th century, and the return period of the flood hydrograph was determined to be 10 years judging from the level of civil engineering of those days. The numerical results suggested the followings: The levees at the first stage were made to block the dominant divergent streams to gather the river flows together efficiently; by the completed open-levee system, excess river flow over the main channel capacity was discharged through upstream levee openings to old stream courses which were used as temporary floodways, and after the flood peak, a part of the flooded water returned to the main channel through the downstream levee openings. It is considered that the ideas of civil engineers of those days to control the floods exceeding river channel capacity, embodied in their levee arrangement, will give us hints on how to control the extraordinary floods that we should face in the near future when the scale of storms will increase due to the global climate change.