Assessing tropical cyclone compound flood risk using hydrodynamic modelling: a case study in Haikou City, China

The co-occurrence of storm tide and rainstorm during tropical cyclones (TCs) can lead to compound flooding in low-lying coastal regions. The assessment of TC compound flood risk can provide vital insight for research on coastal flooding prevention. This study investigates TC compound flooding by constructing a storm surge model and overland flooding model using Delft3D Flexible Mesh (DFM), illustrating the serious consequences from the perspective of storm tide. Based on the probability distribution of storm tide, this study regards TC1415 as the 100-year event, TC6311 as the 50-year event, TC8616 as the 25-year event, TC8007 as the 10-year event, and TC7109 as the 5-year event. The results indicate that the coastal area is a major floodplain, primarily due to storm tide, with the inundation severity positively correlated with the height of the storm tide. For 100-year TC event, the inundation area with a depth above 1.0 m increases by approximately 2.5 times when compared with 5-year TC event. Comparing single-driven flood (storm tide flooding and rainstorm inundation) and compound flood hazards shows that simply accumulating every single-driven flood hazard to define the compound flood hazard may cause underestimation.

Automated summary

This study investigates compound flooding caused by tropical cyclones using a storm surge model and overland flooding model. The results show that coastal areas are major floodplains, with the severity of flooding correlated with the height of the storm tide.