Detecting floodplain inundation based on the upstream-downstream relationship

The rise in river stage (water depth) can lead to disastrous floodplain inundation. On the basis of hydraulic simulation data, this study proposes novel data-analytical methods to infer the threshold river stage and detect floodplain inundation. A quasi-Muskingum model is derived from the classical Muskingum model to characterise the relationship between upstream and downstream river stages. Based on this model, F-test and modified Akaike information criterion AIC(c) are introduced to test if there is a change of the upstream-downstream relationship. Furthermore, a bootstrap-based calibration-validation experiment is set up to evaluate the performance of the quasi-Muskingum model. The proposed methods are applied to a case study of the 1991 and 2001 floods in the Flinders and Norman Rivers in Northern Australia. The results show that floodplain inundation does change the upstream-downstream relationship as it drastically alters the stage-discharge relationship. To combine the quasi-Muskingum model with F-test and AIC(c) facilitates an efficient approach to detect the change and infer the threshold river stage. The analytical testing is in concert with visual examination - the time when the river stage becomes higher than the detected threshold coincides with the beginning of floodplain inundation. Despite the change, the quasi-Muskingum model effectively captures the upstream-downstream relationship and requires a small number of samples in calibration. This study highlights the effectiveness of the data-analytical methods in dealing with the change of the upstream-downstream relationship. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved,