Guidance in the calibration of two-dimensional models of historical floods in urban areas: a case study

ABSTRACT

The statistical characterization of extreme floods largely benefits from the reconstruction of historical floods, making use of various documentary sources and of hydrodynamic models. The two-dimensional (2D) modelling approach provides a higher accuracy and detail with respect to one-dimensional (1D) modelling. On the other hand, 2D models require a large amount of topographic and hydraulic information for calibration, having several parameters to be determined, which makes the calibration prone to underdetermination. To address this issue, we provide here practical guidance for the effective calibration of 2D models for the reconstruction of historical floods in urban areas with a limited amount of information available. Specifically, we show how to constrain model parameters by distinguishing among “static,” “dynamic” and “global” data and their role in the calibration procedure. The latter is exemplified by a relevant application to the reconstruction of the great 1870 flood of Rome, Italy.

KEYWORDS:

• 2D flood model
• calibration
• historical hydrology
• historical floods

Editor S. Archfield Associate editor (not assigned)

Editor S. Archfield Associate editor (not assigned)

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) in the frame of the Departments of Excellence Initiative 2018–2022 granted to the Department of Engineering of Roma Tre University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.