Rapid Response Numerical Modeling of the 2010 Pakistan Flooding

Abstract

Late summer 2010 saw record flooding of the Indus River in Pakistan. In response to requests by the U.S. Army, the writers provided flood extents to aid humanitarian assistance in the affected areas. Numerical modeling provided the best way to compute the flooding in this situation, but with limited bathymetric, topographic, and inflow information, assumptions had to be made; timelines were of significantly higher importance than complete accuracy. The writers developed an adaptive hydraulics (AdH) model of the Indus River from Sukkur to the Arabian Sea covering approximately 180,000 km