192 Queenston Street, St.

Catharines, Ontario, L2R 2Z7

(905) 324-6825 • tatianayu20@gmail.com

December 14, 2018

GISC9118-D3

Mr. James Burn

GISC9118 Lecturer
Niagara College
135 Taylor Road,
Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON
L0S 1J0

Dear Mr. Burn,

RE: GISC9118 Deliverable 3 Watershed Mapping

This is my official submission for Deliverable 3 – Watershed Mapping for GISC9118

Foundation of Mapping.
In this document you will find the Technical Memorandum and Map Book that includes
following maps:
- High Risk of flooding;
- Medium Risk of flooding;
- Low Risk of flooding;
- General Risk of flooding
This maps and methodology provided in Technical Memorandum with assist to client (in
this case insurance company) to understand what houses are in the risk zones.

Please contact me at your convenience at (905)324-6825 or by e-mail at

tatianayu20@gmail.com. I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Regards,

Tetiana Yurchenko
GIS-GM Certificate Candidate
T.Y.

Enclosures: 1.) GISC9118D3Yurchenko.docx

 Technical Memorandum
Project: Deliverable # 3 Watershed Mapping

Client: James Burn Prepared By: Tetiana Yurchenko,

Bachelor of Geography, GIS-GM Certificate
Candidate
Subject:
Date: December 14, 2018 Deliverable#3

1. Introduction
Rainfall over an extended period and an extended area can cause major rivers to
overflow their banks. The water can cover enormous areas. Downstream areas may be
affected, even when they didn’t receive much rain themselves.
With large rivers the process is relatively slow. The rain water enters the river in
many ways. Some rain will fall into the river directly, but that alone doesn’t make the river
rise high. A lot of rain water will run off the surface when the soil is saturated or hard. It
will flow to small rivers that flow to larger rivers and these rivers flow into even larger
rivers. In this way all the rain that fell in a large area (catchment area) comes together in
this one very large river. When there is a lot of rain over a long period, you see the river
rise gradually as it is fed with water form smaller rivers. It takes time for all the rainwater
to reach the river, but once it is in the river it has to flow downstream to sea (Flooding
from rivers overtopping their banks or breaking through dikes (river flooding), retrieved
2018).
The area of our interest is a part of Welland, which suffers from flooding from
overland water sources over the years (GISC9118 D3 Terms of Reference, 2018).

2. Steps
Before analyzing the risk of the flood we need to convert the provided contour
information to points (see Figure 1 Conversion from contour to points

Tetiana Yurchenko
1

tatianayu20@gmail.com
Page

#4341637
 Figure 1 Conversion from contour to points

Then with the help of Thin plate spline (tin) module in SAGA we can create a
surface based on the height values of these points. The cellsize should be around 1-5 to
make the surface more detailed.
Again, using SAGA (Fill Sinks (wang & liu) module) flow directions and filled
surface can be created. Duplicating the filled surface layer and turning it to hillshade helps
to see the relief of the area in colour (see Figure 2 Two layers of Filled DEM).

Figure 2 Two layers of Filled DEM

The next step is using of the Strahler order module, which will help to assign
Strahler numbers to each of the stream to understand where the flow is smaller or bigger.
The last step is using Channel network and drainage basins module in SAGA
create channels and drainage basins that are required for risk analysis and are the main
data used for this. The whole procedure is described in Terms of Reference, the only
correction that was done is usage of Thin plate spline (tin) module instead of Interpolation
plugin because this plugin is no longer exists in QGIS versions newer 3.0. Older version
of QGIS was used to compare which way is easier, so I came to conclusion that
Interpolation plugin requires more time and work done.

Tetiana Yurchenko
2

tatianayu20@gmail.com
Page

#4341637
 3. Methodology
To undertake flood risk analysis we firstly need to classify the objects by risk. It is
assumed that there is a high, medium and small risk.
There are 5 numbers of Strahler order: from 1 to 5 that we got after using “Strahler
order” module from the processing toolbox. Highlighting each number in attribute table
and exporting it to separate shapefile will help to see the difference between them on the
screen. Channels of the 1st order are smaller, while the channels of 5th order are the
biggest. It is shown by colour and width of the line. It is logical that the bigger river, the
bigger flow, so the higher risk of the flow. There also can be seen that in our case flow
goes from West to East (from smaller rivers to bigger).
Therefore it is assumed that the channels of 5th and 4th order bring high risk of
flooding to the houses standing nearby; 3rd and 2nd – medium risk, 1st – low risk.
To understand what houses are in danger, buffers are needed to be created. The
size of the buffer is approximate. It is assumed that:
 the channels of the 1st order have 1 m buffer;
 the channels of the 2nd – 5 m buffer;
 the channels of the 3rd – 15 m buffer;
 the channels of the 4th – 25 m buffer;
 the channels of the 5th – 40 m buffer.
The size of drainage basins also influence on the risk of flooding. Size will help
determine the amount of water reaching the river, as the larger the catchment the greater
the potential for flooding. It is also determined on the basis of length and width of the
drainage basin (Drainag Basin, retrieved 2018).
Thus, 4 of the largest drainage basins are chosen as those that can potentially
cause the high risk of the houses flooding. Each of these drainage basins has area more
than 120,000 sq.m.
Drainage basins that have area between 50,000 and 120,000 sq.m can cause the
medium risk of the houses flooding. Those that have area less 50,000 sq.m cause the
low risk of the flooding.
Thus, by summarizing the above, I grouped the information into a table.

Tetiana Yurchenko
3

tatianayu20@gmail.com
Page

#4341637
 Table 1 The Level of the risk depending on the drainage basin and Strahler
number

Area of drainage Risk Strahler Order Buffer

basin
> 120,000 HIGH 5-4 25-40 m
MEDIUM 3-2 5- 15 m
LOW 1 1m
50,000 – 120,000 MEDIUM 5-3 15-40 m
LOW 2-1 1-5 m
<50,000 LOW 5-1 1-40 m

Those buildings that are in the area of the buffer (located directly in it, partially or
just touch) are considered as in the risk.

4. Risk analysis
After producing mapping that shows the risk of flooding houses in the particular
part of Welland, I found out that:
 35 houses are in a high risk zone of flooding;
 38 houses are in a medium risk zone of flooding;
 22 houses are in a low risk zone of flooding.
Thereby 95 out of 296 houses are most likely to flood and probably need insurance.
In percentage terms, this is 32% of the building of the whole area.

5. Conclusion
The assignment overviewed the possibility of high/medium/low risk of houses
flooding in Welland. It was done using QGIS 3.2.0. The special technique was developed
to justify the levels of risks of houses flooding.

References
Drainag Basin. (retrieved 2018). Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_basin
Flooding from rivers overtopping their banks or breaking through dikes (river flooding).
(retrieved 2018). Retrieved from Floodsite:
http://www.floodsite.net/juniorfloodsite/html/en/student/thingstoknow/hydrology/riv
erfloods.html
(2018). GISC9118 D3 Terms of Reference. Niagara College.

Tetiana Yurchenko
4

tatianayu20@gmail.com
Page

#4341637
Welland Risk Flooding
Map book

Author: Tetiana Yurchenko

Data provided by Niagara College
December 14, 2018
Area of interest

INDEX

Area of interest...........................................2
High Risk Of Flooding...................................3
Medium Risk Of Flooding...............................4
Low Risk of Flooding....................................5
General Risk Of Flooding...............................6

Channels of the 1st order Channels of the 4th order

Channels of the 2nd order Channels of the 5th order
Channels of the 3rd order Buildings 2
High Risk of Flooding

Channels of the 1st order

Channels of the 2nd order
Channels of the 3rd order
Channels of the 4th order
Channels of the 5th order
Buildings with High Risk of flooding
Buildings
Buffer
Drainage Basins with High Risk
Drainage Basins

3
Medium Risk of Flooding

Channels of the 1st order

Channels of the 2nd order
Channels of the 3rd order
Channels of the 4th order
Channels of the 5th order
Buildings with Medium Risk of flooding
Buildings
Buffer
Drainage Basins with High Risk
Drainage Basins with Medium Risk
Drainage Basins

4
Low Risk of Flooding

Channels of the 1st order

Channels of the 2nd order
Channels of the 3rd order
Channels of the 4th order
Channels of the 5th order
Buildings with Low Risk of flooding
Buildings
Buffer
Drainage Basins with High Risk
Drainage Basins with Medium Risk
Drainage Basins

5
General Risk of Flooding

Channels of the 1st order

Channels of the 2nd order
Channels of the 3rd order
Channels of the 4th order
Channels of the 5th order
Buildings with High Risk of flooding
Buildings with Medium Risk of flooding
Buildings with Low Risk of flooding
Buildings
Buffer
Drainage Basins with High Risk
Drainage Basins with Medium Risk
Drainage Basins