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THUY LOI UNIVERSITY

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH:
IDENTIFICATION OF FLOOD AND FLASH FLOOD RISK IN MOUNTAINOUS
RIVER BASINS BASED ON RAIN ESTIMATION BY NUMERICAL WEATHER
MODEL, CLIMATE MODEL

Students: Tran Duc Huy – 57NKN

Vuong Tai Chi – 57NKN

Pham Duc Binh – 57NKN

Instructors: Assoc. Prof. Do Hoai Nam

Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Mai Dang

Hanoi, 5th March 2018

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IDENTIFICATION OF FLOOD AND FLASH FLOOD RISK IN

MOUNTAINOUS RIVER BASINS BASED ON RAIN ESTIMATION BY
NUMERICAL WEATHER MODEL, CLIMATE MODEL

ABSTRACT: Extreme floods have a great influence on the life of a large part of the
Vietnamese people. Despite recent notable advances in weather forecasting, most operational
early warning systems for extreme rainstorms and flash floods are still based on rainfall
measurements from rain gauges and weather radars, rather than on forecasts. Therefore,
warning lead times are bounded to a few hours and warnings are usually issued when the event
is already taking place. Developing countries such as Vietnam are exposed to flooding
problems more than developed countries and there is an urgent need for flood monitoring,
control and warning systems. This work proposes an early warning system for heavy
precipitation events in Vietnam, aimed at identifying forecasts of extreme rainfall
accumulations over short durations and within small-size catchments prone to flash flooding.

1. Introduction

A flash flood is a rapid flooding of geomorphic low-lying areas: washes, rivers, dry
lakes and basins. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a severe
thunderstorm, hurricane, tropical storm. Flash floods are distinguished from regular floods by a
timescale of less than six hours. The water that is temporarily available is often used by plants with
rapid germination and short growth cycles and by specially adapted animal life. Flash floods have
a devastating impact on human activities. Although flash floods typically affect limited areas up
to few hundreds of square kilometers (Gaume et al., 2009). When dealing with such extreme
events, an alternative approach for early warning systems is to develop robust indicators for flood
detection, rather than quantitative discharge/level forecasting.

Our scientific research is a large problem including two stages. In this year we focus on
collecting and analyzing data

2. Impact of floods on people's lives

Fast floods are difficult to predict and develop so rapidly that time to react and to initiate
emergency action is very short, often too short to prevent loss of life.

According to Central Steering Committee for Disaster Preparedness and Search and
Rescue, between 2000 and 2015, there were 250 flash floods, landslides and 646 missing.
Approximately 351 people; more than 9,700 houses drifted, more than 10,000 houses flooded,
severe damage; tens of thousands of hectares of rice and flooded crops. Many traffic works,
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irrigation, livelihood, economic damage severely. Total damage estimated at more than 3.300
billion. Therefore, early warning of flash floods is essential to mitigate the consequences.

Figure 1. Damage caused by floods

3. Defining catchment boundary and parameters

3.1. Description of study area

Red River is the catchment area of many large cities, if the flash floods occurred, it would
cause serious consequences; therefore, the research on flash floods on the Red River is very
necessary.

The following figure is the region we used as a layer for Arcgis

Figure 2. The base layer

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3.2. Catchment delineation

Steps in Arcgis to delineate the watershed:

3.3 Basin slope

Basin slope is one of the important parameters to recognize the flash flood. It is clear that
if the basin is steep, it is easy to occur flash flood. Therefore, defining the basin slope is one of
the essential steps.
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In Arcgis, we click on the “Spatial Analyst tool” and select “slope” option to perform the
basin slope as a new layer.

Figure 3. Basin slope

4. Methods and Data

All steps to research are described below

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4.1. Extract daily rainfall data in ASCII text format for grids inside and nearby the catchment on

Link to access the data: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.NASA/.GES-

DAAC/.TRMM_L3/.TRMM_3B42RT/.v7/.daily/

In “Data Selection” filed, click “Data Viewer”

Then, Select Time option and click on red button Redraw.

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Enter the gird coordinates (Longitude, Latitude) that you want to extract the data and then
click Redraw.

After that click “Data in view”, we have the desired data in “Data tables” from 1/3/2000
to 31/10/2016 like the following picture:
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4.3. Calculate rainfall indices

a) Calculate rainfall indices at some sites by using Excel

We collected the rainfall data of 9 coordinates that are inside or nearby the selected
watershed. We moved all of them into excel and calculated related parameters including monthly,
annual rainfall, 1-day and 3-day maximal rainfall in 15 years from 1/1/2000 to 31/12/2015.
𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙
The annual rainfall equal 15

𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑙

The monthly rainfall equal 12

For 1-day rainfall we used Max function in Excel to find the day that has the highest
rainfall

For 3-day max rainfall we use Visual Basic for Applications in Excel (VBA) to find three
days that have the largest sum of rainfall

We have the following table:

Long Lat Sum Monthly Annual 1-day max 3-day max

No. o o 3 3 3 3 3
E N (m ) (m ) (m ) (m ) (m )
1 106.375 21.125 27096.87 150.53817 1806.458 166.41 341.85
2 106.625 21.125 27144.81 150.8045 1809.654 198.96 275.31
3 106.375 20.875 3951.24 21.951333 263.416 95.55 225.12
4 106.625 20.875 4027.53 22.375167 268.502 131.61 220.59
5 106.375 21.375 26825.73 149.03183 1788.382 180.45 281.46
6 106.625 21.375 3707.22 20.595667 247.148 84.69 198.3
7 106.125 21.375 28061.82 155.899 1870.788 287.82 437.7
8 106.125 21.125 3782.1 21.011667 252.14 107.28 219.75
9 106.125 20.875 13069.98 72.611 871.332 298.95 412.59

Table 1: Rainfall indices at coordinates through 15 years from 2001 to 2015

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b) Interpolate rainfall indices at every sites on the watershed by using Arcgis

The data collected from the TRMM website only have the rainfall data of some locations;
therefore, interpolation is a useful tool for researchers to estimate the data of unknown locations.

We added the above data table on Arcgis as a layer and assigned the xyz coordinate to it
at which x is longitude, y is latitude, and z is precipitation. We converted this layer to shape file
and interpolate the data by clicking on “IDW” in “Interpolation” tool. We chose Monthly data as
z coordinate. The next step, we extract the data of our selected watershed by using “Extract by
Mask” option. Then we have the following figure:

Figure 4. Monthly data

From this figure, we discover that the monthly rainfall on the watershed distribute
unevenly. The amount of rainfall in the West of the watershed is larger its in the North and the
South. In addition, Arcgis has the ability to represent the maximum, minimum and mean rainfall
by using “histogram” option:
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Figure 5. Maximum, minimum and mean rainfall

The result will be the same for annual rainfall.

Although the highest monthly and annual rainfall is in the West but in here is not the
region that has largest 1-day max rainfall:

Figure 6. 1-day max data

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From the figure 3, we discover that the highest 1-day max rainfall is in the East of the
watershed with more than 185 (m3). This largest rainfall is even higher than the highest monthly
rainfall over the watershed. In contrast, the 3-day max rainfall in the East is smallest:

Figure 7. 3-day max data

From the figure 4, we find out that the largest 3-day rainfall is in the West that has the
same result as monthly and annual rainfall.

5. Conclusion

Flooding is one of the natural disasters which occur in Vietnam in every year. Flood
forecasting and the issuing of flood warnings are effective ways to reduce damage. The proposed
system will be efficient because it has better coordination of monitoring, communication and
transmission technologies which are adaptable to background conditions in the country. The
proposed system also ensures increased accessibility for assessment of emergency situations and
enhances effectiveness and efficiency in responding to catastrophic incidents. In summary, the
proposed system would be beneficial to the community for decision-making and evacuation
planning purposes. This is the basis for assessing the eviction of the market and the voluntary
evacuation of people.

In the next year we plan to research the last part of this large problem. We will find more
materials and effort to achieve the overall objective of this 2-year science research.
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REFERENCES

Alfieri, Lorenzo and Thielen, Jutta. “A European precipitation index for extreme rain-storm and
flash flood early warning”. Wiley Online Library. 1 June 2012.

Gaume E, Bain V, Bernardara P, Newinger O, Barbuc M, Bateman A, Blaskovi ˇ cov ˇ a L,

Bl´oschl G, Borga M, Dumitrescu A, Daliakopoulos ¨I, Garcia J, Irimescu A, Kohnova S,
Koutroulis A, Marchi L, Matreata S, Medina V, Preciso E, Sempere-Torres D, Stancalie G,
Szolgay J, Tsanis I, Velasco D, Viglione A. 2009. “A compilation ofdata on European flash
floods”. J. Hydrol. 367: 70–78

Nguyen, Hoang Son. “Research for applying forecasting floods model for Thu Bon – Vu Gia
River”. 14 April 2016.