Development of the Jamuneswari Flood Forecasting System: Case Study in Bangladesh

Abstract

A flood forecasting system has been developed using MIKE11 river-modeling software modules rainfall-runoff (RR) [or Nedbor-Afstromnings model (NAM)], hydrodynamic (HD), and flood forecasting (FF) for the Jamuneswari river catchment of the northwestern part of Bangladesh. The 3-arc second shuttle radar topography mission (SRTM) digital elevation model (DEM) version 4.0 and the D8 method of ArcGIS9.3 have been used to delineate river network and catchment bounderies, which are required for MIKE 11 model setup. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) model-forecasted rainfall data have been used in MIKE 11 NAM-HD modules to increase the forecast lead time to 72 h. Errors in forecast results have been assessed by computing efficiency index, coefficient of correlation, volume error, peak error, and peak time error. Integration of the MIKE 11 HD module with the MIKE NAM module has improved the result by 10.84% for efficiency index, 20.7% for volume error, 25.61% for peak error, and 95.83% for peak time error. The MIKE 11 FF module was applied along with the integrated MIKE 11 NAM and HD modules to minimize error in the forecasted result. The efficiency index, volume error, peak error, and peak time error of the hindcast result, before updating by MIKE 11 FF, were calculated as 0.803, 0.505%, 2.58%, and 2 h, After updating by the MIKE 11 FF module, results were calculated as 0.989,