Flooding time nomograph for urban river flood prediction: Case study of Dorim stream basin, Seoul

Global climate change is intensifying flood damage in urban rivers. Notably, most small and medium-sized urban rivers have a brief concentration period and are highly vulnerable to sudden heavy rains that lead to a rapid increase in water levels. Therefore, rapid flood forecasting must be performed through accurate flood occurrence and timing prediction. In this study, a flooding time nomograph (FTN) was proposed to predict the flood occurrence time according to rainfall conditions, such as intensity, time distribution, and duration. In addition, rainfall–runoff simulations were performed by establishing different virtual rainfall scenarios using Huff's quartile rainfall time distribution. The simulation results were used to formulate the relationship between the rainfall intensity and flood occurrence time to generate the FTN. The applicability of this tool was verified through a comparison with the observed flood occurrence time for an actual rainfall event, which was highly accurate in the target watershed, with a correlation coefficient >0.8 and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency >0.6. Therefore, the proposed FTN can be used to reasonably predict the occurrence of floods and the time of flood occurrence using only predicted rainfall information.