Open AccessSpatial targeting of nature‐based solutions for flood risk management within river catchments
Author(s) -
Reaney Sim M.
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of flood risk management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.049
H-Index - 36
ISSN - 1753-318X
DOI - 10.1111/jfr3.12803
Subject(s) - flood myth , environmental science , hydrology (agriculture) , hazard , scale (ratio) , drainage basin , downstream (manufacturing) , environmental resource management , water resource management , geography , geology , cartography , economics , chemistry , operations management , geotechnical engineering , archaeology , organic chemistry
A wide range of nature‐based solutions for flood hazard management work by storing and slowing flow within catchments, and therefore, there is a need to identify the optimal locations for implementing these solutions. This paper presents a relative scoring‐based mapping of the likely locations that contribute to the flood peak. Targeting flow reduction and attenuating mitigation actions in these locations can be an effective way to reduce flood damages at impact points downstream. The presented tool, SCIMAP‐Flood, uses information on land cover, hydrological connectivity, flood generating rainfall patterns and hydrological travel time distributions to impacted communities to find the potential source areas of flood waters. The importance of each location in the catchment is weighted based on its contribution to the flood hazard at each of the downstream impact points. In the example application, SCIMAP‐Flood is applied at a 5‐m grid resolution for the River Eden catchment, Cumbria, England, to provide sub‐field scale information at the landscape extent. Therefore, the tool can identify sub‐catchments where more detailed work can test different mitigation measures.