A Dynamic Early Warning Model for Flash Floods Based on Rainfall Pattern Identification

Abstract Flash floods are one of the most devastating natural hazards in mountainous and hilly areas. In this study, a dynamic warning model was proposed to improve the warning accuracy by addressing the problem of ignoring the randomness and uncertainty of rainfall patterns in flash flood warning. A dynamic identification method for rainfall patterns was proposed based on the similarity theory and characteristic rainfall patterns database. The characteristic rainfall patterns were constructed by k-means clustering of historical rainfall data. Subsequently, the dynamic flood early warning model was proposed based on the real-time correction of rainfall patterns and flooding simulation by the HEC-HMS (Hydrologic Engineering Center’s Hydrologic Modeling System) model. To verify the proposed model, three small watersheds in China were selected as case studies. The results show that the rainfall patterns identified by the proposed approach exhibit a high correlation with the observed rainfall. With the increase of measured rainfall information, the dynamic correction of the identified rainfall patterns results in corresponding flood forecasts with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) exceeding 0.8 at t = 4, t = 5, and t = 6, thereby improving the accuracy of flash flood warnings. Simultaneously, the proposed model extends the forecast lead time with high accuracy. For rainfall with a duration of six hours in the Xinxian watershed and eight hours in the Tengzhou watershed, the proposed model issues early warnings two hours and three hours before the end of the rainfall, respectively, with a warning accuracy of more than 0.90. The proposed model can provide technical support for flash flood management in mountainous and hilly watersheds.