Development of a Simulation Model for Real-Time Urban Floods Warning: A Case Study at Sukhumvit Area, Bangkok, Thailand

Increasingly frequent, high-intensity rain events associated with climatic change are driving urban drainage systems to function beyond their design discharge capacity. It has become an urgent issue to mitigate the water resource management challenge. To address this problem, a real-time procedure for predicting the inundation risk in an urban drainage system was developed. The real-time procedure consists of three components: (i) the acquisition and forecast of rainfall data; (ii) rainfall-runoff modeling; and (iii) flood inundation mapping. This real-time procedure was applied to a drainage system in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok, Thailand, to evaluate its prediction efficacy. The results showed precisely that the present real-time procedure had high predictability in terms of both the water level and flood inundation area mapping. It could also determine hazardous areas with a certain amount of lead time in the drainage system of the Sukhumvit area within an hour of rainfall data. These results show the real-time procedure could provide accurate flood risk warning, resulting in more time to implement flood management measures such as pumping and water gate operations, or evacuation.