A geospatial multi-domain flood prediction tool exploiting open datasets

Floods and other natural disasters have been threatening cities for hundreds of years, highlighting the importance of preventing emergencies and assessing risks. Urban flood risk assessment methodologies are of paramount importance when planning cities development and mitigation facilities. In this sense, a comprehensive tool was developed, enabling any stakeholder to perform analysis of an area of interest. To achieve this goal, CityZones-Flood was developed. It performs flood risk assessments in cities with respect to the presence of rivers, response centres, and the elevation of the zones. To evaluate it, risk assessment was performed in the region of Porto Alegre, Brazil. • A flood risk assessment tool was developed and presented. • The tool is capable of performing flood risk assessment from open and publicly available data. • The use of OpenStreetMap data for response centres and rivers locations combined with elevation data was demonstrated as feasible for flood risk assessment.