A Comprehensive Review of Urban Floods and Relevant Modeling Techniques

Urban floods have been widely recognized as a major threat to many cities around the world, posing severe danger. Regarding flood risk management, flood modeling allows an understanding of different flood conditions and better assesses their impact and prediction. Climate data are one of the prime requisites for running any flood model and also are essential to input into the time series for accurate prediction of floods. Most of the hydrodynamic models developed to date allow the time series data as input for future prediction. Application of the appropriate model considering the relative data inputs has become more challenging for effective flood modeling, especially in urbanized floodplains. This chapter provides an overview of the prevailing modeling tools and approaches to flood modeling in urban settings. Flood models are broadly categorized as one-dimensional (either surface flow or sewer) or two-dimensional (sewer-surface coupled), and one must select a suitable flood modeling tool for a specific application. This chapter helps urban flood managers and potential users carry out functional flood modeling by harmonizing input data, model complexity and run time with their requirements and demands.