The Influence of Infiltration Capacity and Antecedent Soil Moisture Conditions on Urban Pluvial Flooding

Sammanfattning: Urban pluvial floods occur during extreme rain events and both occurrence and magnitude of these floods are expected to increase. Preserving or constructing green areas in urban areas has been shown to mitigate and control these floods. The common way to evaluate flood risks is to set up a rainfall-runoff model, but these studies are often case related and only investigate the soil characteristics for that specific case. Multiple studies have also stated that the difference between major and minor flooding effects is connected to the antecedent soil moisture content. This thesis attempts to investigate how different soil characteristics influencing infiltration affect the hydraulic response in two Swedish urban catchments and if antecedent soil moisture is a critical factor. To evaluate the hydraulic response, a two-dimensional surface runoff model of two different urban catchments was forced with a hyetograph of a CDS-rain with a return period of 100 years. The simulations were conducted with three different soil types for all urban green areas: clay, sandy loam and sand, and three different antecedent soil moisture contents for clay and sandy loam. Flood extent and discharge from catchment area was evaluated, as was flood depth and overland flow in 16 chosen evaluation points. The results showed that with decreasing infiltration rate of a soil and with increasing antecedent soil moisture content, the severity of the flood and discharge at the catchment outlet was increased. It was also concluded that soil type affects flood extent, flood depth, overland flow and discharge from catchment to a greater extent than antecedent soil moisture.