The Time of Concentration and River Physical Geometry Relationship

Time of concentration (Tc) is one of the main inputs in rainfall–runoff model which depends on catchment length, slope, soil properties and surface cover. Factor such as floodplain also has a significant contribution on the flood wave travel time. Floodplain which influences the flow and the travelling time is not possible to be calculated using common Tc formulae. One approach to handle this complex behaviour is to deploy the hydrodynamic model as part of the rainfall–runoff model. This chapter explains the application of hydrodynamic approach to determine Tc for large catchment with the effect of floodplain. A hydrodynamic river model for Sg Relai was developed as part of the rainfall–runoff model covering 460 km2 catchment area. It includes channels covering 90 km long which is extended to the floodplain based on the digital terrain model. The simulation results show that once the flood water spill to the floodplain, the channel travelling time is delayed by several hours. The delay of the travel time increases as the rainfall intensity increase which demonstrates that hydrodynamic modelling with the integration of floodplain is capable to compute the variation of Tc.