Document Type

Conference Paper

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

1. NATURAL SCIENCES, 1.5 EARTH AND RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, Environmental sciences, Hydrology, Water resources, Civil engineering

Publication Details

CERI 2018 and ITRN 2018 Conference, Dublin, Ireland, 29-30 August.

Abstract

Floods remain to be one of the natural catastrophic disasters with serious adverse social and economic implications on individuals and communities all around the world. In Ireland, frequency of flood events have increased dramatically during the last forty years and is expected to continue to rise primarily due to changes in rainfall and temperature patterns as a result of the global climate change. Small river catchments are usually vulnerable to different types of flooding particularly those associated with “monster” rainfall events, which are characterised by short durations and high intensities. Therefore accurate prediction of flood hydrographs resulting from these rainfall events are vital for issuing timely and detailed warning to competent authorities in order to allow for efficient preparedness in the affected catchment and other downstream areas. The current study assess the performance of Unit Hydrograph model in predicting flood hydrograph due to extreme rainfall storms at three small river catchments with different physical and hydrological characteristics. Results suggest that the UH model is more powerful in simulating flood hydrographs at natural rural catchments than in urban catchments. The artificial drainage settings of the urban catchments could be the main reason for hindering the UH from simulating the characteristic behaviour of such type of catchments.

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