Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Flood forecasting”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 37 records · Page 2

Storm DEPART(Damage Estimate Prediction And Recovery Tool)

Damage prediction, materials needed, and resource allocation modeling capability in order to support pre-incident planning and preparation by predicting damage to the power generation capacity, transmission grids, distribution networks, and communications assets. The capabilities will be developed by multiple factors to include wind bands, storm surge, and flooding forecasts to participant’s assets which will result in a report of predicted damages. Additional factors to include available participants infrastructure data to include class, age, construction, location, wind rating, and additional information not in the public domain. Based on predicted damages, the output will be a bill of materials (BOM) to support short-term recovery operations. The extensiveness and level of detail for this BOM will depend on the replacement configuration specifications provided for each individual participant asset. Any limiting factors for the model will be applied related supply chain and resource constraints.

Klett, Mary↗

Global seamless tidal simulation using a 3D unstructured-grid model (SCHISM v5.10.0)

We present a new 3D unstructured-grid global ocean model to study both tidal and nontidal processes, with a focus on the total water elevation. Unlike existing global ocean models, the new model resolves estuaries and rivers down to ~8 m without the need for grid nesting. The model is validated with both satellite and in situ observations for elevation, temperature, and salinity. Tidal elevation solutions have a mean complex root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 4.2 cm for M2 and 5.4 cm for all five major constituents in the deep ocean. The RMSEs for the other four constituents, S2, N2, K1, and O1, are, respectively, 2.05, 0.93, 2.08, and 1.34 cm). The nontidal residual assessed by a tide gauge dataset (GESLA) has a mean RMSE of 7 cm. For the first time ever, we demonstrate the potential for seamless simulation on a single mesh from the global ocean into several estuaries along the US West Coast. The model is able to accurately capture the total elevation, even at some upstream stations. The model can therefore potentially serve as the backbone of a global tide surge and compound flooding forecasting framework.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Urban Flood Modeling: Uncertainty Quantification and Physics‐Informed Gaussian Processes Regression Forecasting

Abstract Estimating uncertainty in flood model predictions is important for many applications, including risk assessment and flood forecasting. We focus on uncertainty in physics‐based urban flooding models. We consider the effects of the model's complexity and uncertainty in key input parameters. The effect of rainfall intensity on the uncertainty in water depth predictions is also studied. As a test study, we choose the Interconnected Channel and Pond Routing (ICPR) model of a part of the city of Minneapolis. The uncertainty in the ICPR model's predictions of the floodwater depth is quantified in terms of the ensemble variance using the multilevel Monte Carlo (MC) simulation method. Our results show that uncertainties in the studied domain are highly localized. Model simplifications, such as disregarding the groundwater flow, lead to overly confident predictions, that is, predictions that are both less accurate and uncertain than those of the more complex model. We find that for the same number of uncertain parameters, increasing the model resolution reduces uncertainty in the model predictions (and increases the MC method's computational cost). We employ the multilevel MC method to reduce the cost of estimating uncertainty in a high‐resolution ICPR model. Finally, we use the ensemble estimates of the mean and covariance of the flood depth for real‐time flood depth forecasting using the physics‐informed Gaussian process regression method. We show that even with few measurements, the proposed framework results in a more accurate forecast than that provided by the mean prediction of the ICPR model.

Kohanpur, Amir H.↗

Exploring Flood Predictability in Taiwan through Coupled Atmospheric–Hydrological and High-Performance Hydrodynamic Models

Effective flood simulation capabilities can tremendously support early warning and disaster prevention. To examine the applicability of a fully physics-based and high-performance flood simulation and forecasting modeling framework for a flood-prone region in Taiwan, we conduct a numerical experiment that couples the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model, WRF-Hydrological modeling system (WRF-Hydro), and the Two-Dimensional Runoff Inundation Toolkit for Operational Needs (TRITON) to perform integrated rainfall, streamflow, and flood simulations. Furthermore, we first use the coupled WRF and WRF-Hydro (WWH) to predict rainfall and streamflow and then drive TRITON with the predicted streamflow hydrographs to simulate flood depth and inundation area. With the refined spatial resolution and parameterization, this framework can better predict rainfall with reasonable spatial patterns. Although WWH could overestimate the amount of rainfall in some areas, the uncertain rainfall–streamflow predictions produce reasonable flood maps able to pinpoint regions at risk of flooding. In terms of model efficiency, the graphics processing unit–based computation can yield a speed-up factor as high as ∼13 compared to the central processing unit–based computation, promoting the efficacy of the coupled modeling framework in practical real-time flood forecasting.

Coupled models↗

Changes in Climate and Its Effect on Timing of Snowmelt and Intensity-Duration-Frequency Curves

Snow is a critical water resource for much of the U.S. and failure to account for changes in climate could deleteriously impact military assets. In this study, we produced historical and future snow trends through modeling at three military sites (in Washington, Colorado, and North Dakota) and the Western U.S. For selected rivers, we performed seasonal trend analysis of discharge extremes. We calculated flood frequency curves and estimated the probability of occurrence of future annual maximum daily rainfall depths. Additionally, we generated intensity-duration-frequency curves (IDF) to find rainfall intensities at several return levels. Generally, our results showed a decreasing trend in historical and future snow duration, rain-on-snow events, and snowmelt runoff. This decreasing trend in snowpack could reduce water resources. A statistically significant increase in maximum streamflow for most rivers at the Washington and North Dakota sites occurred for several months of the year. In Colorado, only a few months indicated such an increase. Future IDF curves for Colorado and North Dakota indicated a slight increase in rainfall intensity whereas the Washington site had about a twofold increase. This increase in rainfall intensity could result in major flood events, demonstrating the importance of accounting for climate changes in infrastructure planning.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

UNCERTAINTY-AWARE DEEP LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR FORECASTING COASTAL WATER LEVEL IN VIRGINIA BEACH

Coastal areas like Virginia Beach, USA, are increasingly vulnerable to flooding. To mitigate the impact of flooding, it is crucial for the City of Virginia Beach to have reliable 72-hour-ahead (3 days) forecasts of water levels at key gauge locations. To support this effort, several sensors have been installed throughout the city to monitor water levels and other environmental parameters such as wind speed, precipitation, and atmospheric pressure. Leveraging sensor data from one of these locations, we developed an uncertainty-aware deep learning model to forecast water levels. We employed deep quantile regression (DQR) to quantify variability in the predictions and examined the performance of three different model architectures. In addition to exclusively including historical data, we investigated the improvement wind forecasts provide to the accuracy of 72-hour-ahead water level predictions. The results show a twelvefold improvement in the flood forecast for a real flooding event.

Hasan, Mahmud [Thomas Jefferson National Accelerat↗

Linkages between riverine flooding risk and economic damage over the continental United States

Economic damages from riverine flooding are expected to grow because of climate change. Yet, there are few 7 studies analyzing flooding damages in the U.S. that clearly measure the roles of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability 8 separately and locally. A lack of this knowledge prohibits spatially detailed predictions of future damages. By being 9 able to separate into these three risk factors, we provide all necessary inputs for uncertainty analysis of the flooding-10 damages forecasts that can incorporate new predictive scenarios for each component. To analyze the flooding risk 11 factors of non-coastal counties within the contiguous U.S. between 1999-2018, we gathered information on (1) 12 property and human damages from flooding, (2) maximum annual river discharge, (3) the number of housing units 13 and the years in which they were built, and (4) the incidence of flooding events. We used the method of trimmed 14 least absolute deviated and trimmed least square estimators to obtain the individual impact of hazard, exposure, and 15 vulnerability in the context of censored flooding damages for panel data. The resulting estimates indicate that 16 exposure has been the main driver of flooding risk for most counties in the U.S. Here, we use these estimates to describe 17 the main source of flooding risk for non-coastal counties for the 1999-2018 period.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

AI Improves the Accuracy, Reliability, and Economic Value of Continental‐Scale Flood Predictions

Accurate flood early warnings are critical to minimize damage and loss of life. Current large‐scale operational forecasting systems, however, have limited accuracy, description of uncertainty, and computational efficiency. While Artificial intelligence (AI) can address these limitations in principle, the accuracy and reliability of AI forecasts have thus far proven insufficient. Here we present a novel hybrid framework that integrates AI‐based machinery termed Errorcastnet (ECN) with the National Water Model (NWM) to showcase the potential of ensemble AI flood forecasts over the contiguous U.S. ECN boosts prediction accuracy four‐ to six‐fold across lead times of 1–10 days, while providing uncertainty quantification. It also outperforms Google's state‐of‐the‐art global AI model. ECN‐based forecasts offer superior economic value (up to four‐fold) for decision‐making as compared to those from NWM alone. ECN performs well in varied ecoregions, physiography, and land management conditions. The framework is computationally efficient, enabling national‐scale ensemble forecasts in minutes.

artificial intelligence↗

Yesterday’s extremes, today’s new normal: flood risk in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Unplanned urban growth has left many cities increasingly vulnerable to extreme rainfall events, particularly in regions with inadequate drainage infrastructures and development encroaching on natural floodplains. Here, in this perspective paper, we examine the September 2024 floods that struck Central Nepal, triggered by a persistent low-pressure system and enhanced by converging moisture flows from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal which led to widespread catastrophic damage. In the Kathmandu Valley, floodwaters expanded to more than 2.5 times the bankfull water extent, causing significant damage to housing, transportation network, and critical infrastructure, displacing thousands of residents, and severely disrupting urban services. This event highlights the urgent need for improved flood management strategies that integrate both structural and non-structural measures into the infrastructure development. While early warning systems provided critical lead time, challenges remain in reducing forecasting uncertainties and improving communication across government agencies and with local communities. A forward-looking approach is essential, including probabilistic flood forecasting systems, sustainable floodplain management, risk-sensitive land use planning, climate- and disaster- resilient infrastructure development, and the integration of nature-based solutions like urban green and blue spaces to mitigate flood impacts. By involving local communities in planning and preparedness efforts, particularly through citizen science initiatives, and engagement with underserved and disadvantaged communities, Nepal can better adapt to the growing risks posed by extreme rainfall and urban flooding and enhance long-term disaster resilience in rapidly urbanizing areas like Kathmandu Valley.

Kathmandu Valley↗

A global daily soil moisture dataset derived from Chinese FengYun Microwave Radiation Imager (MWRI)(2010–2019)

Surface soil moisture (SSM) is an important variable in drought monitoring, floods predicting, weather forecasting, etc. and plays a critical role in water and heat exchanges between land and atmosphere. SSM products from L-band observations, such as the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission, have proven to be optimal global estimations. Although X-band has a lower sensitivity to soil moisture than that of L-band, Chinese FengYun-3 series satellites (FY-3A/B/C/D) have provided sustainable and daily multiple SSM products from X-band since 2008. This research developed a new global SSM product (NNsm-FY) from FY-3B MWRI from 2010 to 2019, transferred high accuracy of SMAP L-band to FY-3B X-band. The NNsm-FY shows good agreement with in-situ observations and SMAP product and has a higher accuracy than that of official FY-3B product. With this new dataset, Chinese FY-3 satellites may play a larger role and provide opportunities of sustainable and longer-term soil moisture data record for hydrological study.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Examples of Mission-driven Data Science from Jefferson Lab and ACES

This presentation details mission-driven data science initiatives at Jefferson Lab and the Joint Institute for Advanced Computing on Environmental Studies (ACES). JLab, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory, operates the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), and is the lead institute for the new High Performance Data Facility (HPDF) Hub. The Joint Institute for ACES brings together interdisciplinary teams in health informatics, climate modeling, computer science, and physics to address environmental challenges, including flood modeling. The Hampton Roads region, particularly Norfolk and Virginia Beach, faces increasing flood risks, motivating the need for rapid, reliable, and risk-aware decision support. ACES’s flooding work has a focus on uncertainty quantification (UQ) and machine learning (ML) for coastal flood management. The work is motivated by the increasing vulnerability of communities such as Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia, to frequent coastal flooding events, and the need for rapid, reliable decision support. The research develops computationally efficient ML surrogate models to forecast water levels and flooding risk. A central theme is the quantification and calibration of predictive uncertainty, especially for out-of-distribution (OOD) scenarios, using techniques such as Monte Carlo Dropout, Deep Ensembles, Gaussian Processes, and Deep Quantile Regression (DQR). The study demonstrates that distance-aware UQ is critical for reliable scientific AI, particularly in high-dimensional, safety-critical, and real-time applications.

McSpadden, Diana [Thomas Jefferson National Accele↗

Technical and Economic Evaluation of the First Ever Polymer Flood Field Pilot to Enhance the Recovery of Heavy Oils on Alaska's North Slope via Machine Assisted History Matching

Polymer flooding has become globally established as a potential enhanced oil recovery method for heavy oils. To determine whether this technology may be useful in developing the substantial heavy oil resources on the Alaska North Slope, a polymer flood field pilot commenced at the Milne Point Unit in August 2018. This study seeks to evaluate the results of the field pilot on a technical and economic basis. A reservoir simulation model is constructed and calibrated to predict the oil recovery performance of the pilot through machine-assisted reservoir simulation techniques. To replicate the early water breakthrough observed during waterflooding, transmissibility contrasts are introduced into the simulation model, forcing viscous fingering effects. In the ensuing polymer flood, these transmissibility contrasts are reduced to replicate the restoration of injection conformance during polymer flooding. Transmissibility contrasts are later reinstated to replicate fracture overextension interpreted in one of the producing wells. The calibrated simulation models produced at each stage of the history matching process are used to forecast oil recovery. These forecasts are used as input for economic analysis, incremental to waterflooding expectations. The simulation forecasts indicate that polymer flooding significantly increases the heavy oil production for this field pilot compared to waterflooding alone, yielding attractive project economics. However, meaningful variations between simulation scenarios demonstrate that a simulation model is only valid for prediction if flow behavior in the reservoir remains consistent with that observed during the history matched period. Critically, this means that a simulation model calibrated for waterflooding may not fully capture the technical and economic benefits of an enhanced oil recovery process such as polymer flooding. Subsequently, the simulation model and economic model are used in conjunction to conduct a sensitivity analysis for polymer flood design parameters, from which recommendations are provided for both the continued operation of the current field pilot and future polymer flood designs. The results demonstrate that a higher polymer concentration can be injected due to the development of fractures in the reservoir. The throughput rate should remain high without exceeding operating constraints. A calculated point-forward polymer utilization parameter demonstrates the decreasing efficiency of the polymer flood at later times in the pattern life. Future projects will benefit from starting polymer injection earlier in the pattern life. A pattern with tighter horizontal well spacing will observe a greater incremental benefit from polymer flooding.

Keith, Cody↗

AI-Improved Resolution Projections of Population Characteristics and Imperviousness Can Improve Resolution and Accuracy of Urban Flood Predictions

Focal Area: (2) Predictive modeling through the use of AI techniques and AI-derived model components. Specifically, we call for the use of deep generative models from ML for providing high-resolution projections of impervious surface area, as well as neural network solvers for fast approximation of urban hydrodynamics to provide greatly enhanced forecasts of future urban flood dynamics.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Dissipation Scaled Internal Wave Drag in a Global Heterogeneously Coupled Internal/External Mode Total Water Level Model

This study showcases a global, heterogeneously coupled total water level system wherein salinity and temperature outputs from a coarser-resolution (~12 km) ocean general circulation model are used to calculate density-driven terms within a global, higher-resolution (~2.5 km) depth-averaged total water level model. We demonstrate that the inclusion of baroclinic forcing in the barotropic model requires modification of the internal wave drag term to prevent excess degradation of tidal results compared to the barotropic model. By scaling the internal tide dissipation by an easy to calculate dissipation ratio, the resulting heterogeneously coupled model has complex root mean square errors (RMSE) of 2.27 cm in the deep ocean and 12.16 cm in shallow waters for the M 2 tidal constituent. While this represents a 10%–20% deterioration as compared to the barotropic model, the improvements in total water level prediction more than offset this degradation. Global median RMSE compared to observations of total water levels, 30-day sea levels, and non-tidal residuals improve by 1.86 (18.5%), 2.55 (42.5%), and 0.36 (5.3%) cm respectively. The drastic improvement in model performance highlights the importance of including density-driven effects within global hydrodynamic models and will help to improve the results of both hindcasts and forecasts in modeling extreme and nuisance flooding. With only an 11% increase in model run time compared to the fully barotropic total water level model, this approach paves the way for high resolution coastal water level and flood models to be used alongside climate models, improving operational forecasting of total water levels.

Blakely, Coleman Peter [University of Notre Dame, ↗

Risk Considerations of Transitioning CO2-EOR Field to CO2 storage Field: Case Study

In the United States (U.S.), carbon dioxide (CO2) injection wells at EOR sites are currently regulated as Class II wells under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Underground Injection Control (UIC) program while dedicated geological CO2 storage (GCS) wells are considered Class VI wells. A CO2-EOR facility considering a transitioning from tertiary oil recovery to injecting CO2 for the primary purpose of long-term storage is required to obtain a Class VI permit where this transition poses an increased risk to underground sources of drinking water. This study considers how transitioning operations from CO2-EOR to storage can impact reservoir plume and pressure transient in the storage envelope, and how these changes could impact area of review and potential unwanted fluid migration. We developed a case study to assess subsurface response and leakage risks associated with a representative, hypothetical operation in a carbonate reservoir. This reservoir transitions from tertiary hydrocarbon recovery to dedicated GCS. Reservoir simulations were run for a set of credible CO2-EOR scenarios to estimate distributions of fluids phases and pressures throughout the model domain after CO2 flooding as well as forecasting the behavior of the reservoir after the transition to a dedicated storage phase. The evolutions from all simulated scenarios were used as the basis for leakage risk quantification using the National Risk Assessment Partnership’s Open-Source Integrated Assessment Model (NRAP-Open-IAM) with a novel reduced-order model to estimate time-dependent leakage of CO2, brine, and hydrocarbon fluids through potentially leaky wells. Results include a description of reservoir response, an estimate of the areal extent that could potentially be impacted by leakage to underground sources of drinking water, and estimates of the magnitude of potential leakage. Considerations for dedicated storage injection well selection, injectivity, and injection scheme performance and potential leakage risk are presented, with implications for risk assessment of well transition discussed. This study presents a risk-based workflow for the Class II to Class VI well transition. Integrating credible numerical simulation of viable CO2-EOR to dedicated CO2 storage with quantitative risk assessment tools, such as the NRAP-Open-IAM, will provide a valuable means to devise operational scenarios and inform decision-making related to storage benefit, leakage risk, and liability. Presented at the SPE/AAPG/SEG Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Conference in Houston, TX, March 11-13, 2024.

Liu, Guoxiang↗

Oil Recovery Prediction for Polymer Flood Field Test of Heavy Oil on Alaska North Slope Via Machine Assisted Reservoir Simulation

The first ever polymer flood field pilot to enhance the recovery of heavy oils on the Alaska North Slope is ongoing. This study constructs and calibrates a reservoir simulation model to predict the oil recovery performance of the pilot through machine-assisted reservoir simulation techniques. To replicate the early water breakthrough observed during waterflooding, transmissibility contrasts are introduced into the simulation model, forcing viscous fingering effects. In the ensuing polymer flood, these transmissibility contrasts are reduced to replicate the restoration of injection conformance during polymer flooding, as indicated by a significant decrease in water cut. Later, transmissibility contrasts are reinstated to replicate a water surge event observed in one of the producing wells during polymer flooding. This event may represent decreased injection conformance from fracture overextension; its anticipated occurrence in the other production well is included in the final forecast. The definition of polymer retention in the simulator incorporates the tailing effect reported in laboratory studies; this tailing effect is useful to the simultaneous history match of producing water cut and produced polymer concentration. The top 24 best-matched simulation models produced at each stage of the history matching process are used to forecast oil recovery. The final forecast clearly demonstrates that polymer flooding significantly increases the heavy oil production for this field pilot compared to waterflooding alone. This exercise displays that a simulation model is only valid for prediction if flow behavior in the reservoir remains consistent with that observed during the history matched period. Critically, this means that a simulation model calibrated for waterflooding may not fully capture the benefits of an enhanced oil recovery process such as polymer flooding. Therefore, caution is recommended in using basic waterflood simulation models to scope potential enhanced oil recovery projects.

Keith, Cody Douglas↗

FFTSF: Revisiting Sub-Seasonal Streamflow Forecasting with Simple Feedforward Network

Accurate short-to-subseasonal streamflow forecasts are vital for water management, including flood preparedness, drought mitigation, hydropower scheduling, and ecosystem protection. However, extending a forecast beyond a few days remains challenging due to complexity of hydrological processes. While recent self-attention based transformer architectures such as iTransformer have gained traction in time-series forecasting, these models suffer from several critical limitations: (1) significant computational overhead that scales quadratically with sequence length, (2) vulnerability to overfitting on limited hydrological datasets, (3) degraded performance on long-horizon forecasts due to attention decay, and (4) excessive architectural complexity that hampers interpretability and operational deployment. In this study, we propose a simple Feedforward Time Series Forecasting (FFTSF) network that directly addresses these limitations through its lightweight architecture and long-range forecasting capabilities. We evaluate FFTSF across 178 USGS stream gauges spanning diverse climate regimes by forecasting lead times of 1-, 7-, 14-, and 30-days. Our results demonstrate that FFTSF achieves competitive performance at short lead times (NSE of 0.778 for 1-day forecasts) while substantially outperforming complex baselines at longer forecast period, achieving the highest NSE (0.271) at 30-day forecasts with greater robustness and stability. For 30-day forecasts, FFTSF achieves a 71% improvement over NLinear, 57% improvement over DLinear and 12% improvement over the computationally intensive iTransformer while requiring fewer computational resources. Our findings reveal that architectural complexity is not necessary for hydrological forecasting, demonstrating that well-designed simple models can outperform attention mechanisms for subseasonal streamflow forecasting. The computational efficiency and consistent long-range performance of FFTSF make it suitable for water management applications where reliable extended forecasts are essential.

Krishnan Kutty Ambika, Anukesh [ORNL] (ORCID:00000↗

Evaluating precipitation, streamflow, and inundation forecasting skills during extreme weather events: A case study for an urban watershed

Integrated forecasting systems for precipitation, streamflow, and floodplain inundation are of critical importance in mitigating the impacts of destructive floods caused by extreme weather events. However, the skills of streamflow and floodplain inundation forecasts derived from various Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts (QPF) require a greater level of understanding. In this paper, a set of QPF developed by the National Weather Service (NWS) were used to drive a flood modeling system obtained utilizing offline coupling of a physics-based distributed hydrological model, the Distributed Hydrology Soil and Vegetation Model (DHSVM), and a hydrodynamic model, the Two-dimensional Runoff Inundation Toolkit for Operational Needs (TRITON). This flood modeling system was used to produce forecasts of streamflow and floodplain inundation maps during three major flood events in the Brays Bayou Watershed (Houston, Texas, USA) for a range of QPF durations (6–72 h). Then, to investigate the effects of increasing QPF durations on the forecasts, the forecasting skills of precipitation, streamflow, and floodplain inundation were quantified. The results show that: 1) QPF skills for more intense and sustained events such as hurricanes and tropical storms are higher than for shorter, less intense events; 2) while QPF and streamflow forecasting skills decrease as QPF durations increase, inundation forecasts under longer QPF durations (24 or 72 h) show higher skills; 3) extending the maximum QPF duration in operational hydrologic modeling from 24 h (under normal circumstances) to 72 h (for extreme events) may increase the skills of long lead time forecasts for large-scale events like Hurricane Harvey.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗