Main goal and specific goals
The main goal of the project is to establish a robust methodology for the development and implementation of operational EWS for pluvial flood risk in urban areas. The main originality of the project is to be focused at the same time on urban pluvial floods and on EWS. To achieve this goal, the following specific objectives will be addressed during the project:
- Goal 1. Improvement of the state-of-the-art urban drainage models applied to pluvial flooding
- Goal 2. Implementation of an operational pluvial flood EWS in an urban area
- Goal 3. Implementation of efficient ways of communication of flood hazard
Methodology
The project activities are organised around 4 Work Packages (WP). The first 3 WPs are directly related to the 3 specific goals of the project, while WP4 is focused on dissemination of the project activities and results, and on transfer of knowledge.
WP 1: Improvement of dual 1D-2D urban drainage models for pluvial flooding
This WP is focused on the first goal of the proposal and thus, its final aim it to enhance the capabilities and performance of the current dual drainage models used for the definition of hazard and risk maps of pluvial flooding. The WP includes numerical and experimental tasks. The experimental results are used to improve the formulations included in numerical models and to ultimately validate those modes. We analyze different methodologies to include the representation and connection of surface inlets to the manholes of the sewer network, which is one of the features of current urban pluvial flood models that needs to be explored and improved. We will also characterize the hydraulic behavior of green roofs and their efficiency in terms of retaining rain water and diminishing the peak discharge in the sewer network during storm events.
WP 2. Implementation of an operational pluvial flood EWS
The second WP of the project is focused on the implementation of a pilot pluvial flood EWS for the town of Sada. Once calibrated, the pluvial flood model of the urban settlement of Sada is implemented in the MERLIN operational EWS, in order to generate, on a daily basis, forecasts over the next 2 days of the water depth, velocity and pluvial flood hazard in the whole urban settlement. These daily forecasts will be available through the web viewer of MERLIN. This web viewer is being developed at the present time by the research team in cooperation with the regional water administration Augas de Galicia for fluvial floods.
WP3. Efficient ways to communicate risk warnings due to pluvial flooding
WP 3 includes two tasks related to the way in which pluvial flood risk knowledge and warnings are conveyed to the population. We first analyse how population located in pluvial APSFR perceive flood risk, and then propose different ways to communicate pluvial flood risk. Both tasks will be done in cooperation with the regional water administration Augas de Galicia, the regional Civil Protection Agency, and the municipalities involved.
WP4. Dissemination and transfer
This is a transversal work package focused in the dissemination of the project activities and results, as well as on the transfer of the knowledge and products generated during the project to the water administration.
Dissemination
The dissemination plan includes the following actions:
Internal reports
- Validation of Iber-SWMM in a large-scale facility
- Pluvial flood modeling in Morón de la Frontera and Osuna
- Combining machine learning with Iber to model pluvial flooding in a coastal town
- Activities for raising awareness and disseminating information about flood risk.
- Implementation of a pluvial flood early warning system
Papers
- Sañudo, E.; Cea, L.; Puertas, J. (2020) Modelling Pluvial Flooding in Urban Areas Coupling the Models Iber and SWMM. Water, 12, 2647. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12092647
- Sañudo, E., Cea, L., & Puertas, J. (2022). Comparison of three different numerical implementations to model rainfall-runoff transformation on roofs. Hydrological Processes, 36(5). https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14588
- Sañudo, E., Cea, L., Puertas, J., Naves, J., & Anta, J. (2024). Large‐scale physical facility and experimental dataset for the validation of urban drainage models. Hydrological Processes, 38(1), e15068. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.15068
- García-Alén, G., Montalvo, C., Cea, L., & Puertas, J. (2024). Iber-PEST: Automatic calibration in fully distributed hydrological models based on the 2d shallow water equations. Environmental Modelling & Software. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2024.106047
- Montalvo, C., Reyes-Silva, J. D., Sañudo, E., Cea, L. & Puertas, J. (2024). Urban pluvial flood modelling in the absence of sewer drainage network data: A physics-based approach. Journal of Hydrology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.131043
Open-access repository
- Sañudo, E., Cea, L., Puertas, J., Naves, J., & Anta, J. (2023). Experimental dataset on a large-scale urban drainage physical facility [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7941067
Social impact
Since our projects are related to multiple disciplines such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) we participate in the STEMbach program from UDC. This program promotes the research vocation of secondary school students by allowing their participation in research/educational projects with the University staff. In this context, we work on the dissemination of flood risk and hazard through the organization of visits of students from nearby secondary schools to our hydraulics laboratory. In a 1-hour visit we explain our research work related to SATURNO, with emphasis special focus on EWS. We have received visits from 9 secondary schools, totaling 250 students in attendance.
We participate in open science calls as «Divulgando lo nuestro» from UDC, which aims to transfer the contents of the research work done by UDC groups to the general public or in the European Researchers’ Night in Galicia, which aims to bring the figure of the researcher and the benefits of research to society in general. We also work on dissemination through social networks, and we have created specific profiles about flood risk and hazard in Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter.
National and international Congresses and Seminars
- García-Alén, G., Montalvo, C., Cea, L., Puertas, J., (2023). Simulación de inundaciones pluviales en el núcleo urbano de Sada (Galicia) con Iber y PEST. VII Jornadas Ingeniería del Agua (JIA), Cartagena, Spain. 18-19 October 2023.
- Sañudo, E., Cea, L., Puertas, J., Naves, J., & Anta, J. (2023). Ensayos en plataforma de drenaje urbano a escala real y base de datos experimental para validación de modelos numéricos. VII Jornadas Ingeniería del Agua (JIA), Cartagena, Spain. 18-19 October 2023.
- Montalvo, C., Figueroa, C., Sañudo, E., Cea, L., & Puertas, J. (2023). Análisis de diferentes estrategias simplificadas para la consideración de la red de saneamiento en la modelización de inundaciones pluviales urbanas. VII Jornadas Ingeniería del Agua (JIA), Cartagena, Spain. 18-19 October 2023.
- Sañudo, E., Cea, L., & Puertas, J. (2023). Validation of the 2D/1D urban drainage model Iber-SWMM on a large-scale physical model. 40th IAHR World Congress, Vienna, Austria. 21-25 August 2023.
- Sañudo, E., Chen, A., Cea, L., Puertas, J., & Evans, B. (2022). Smart design of green drainage infrastructure at the local scale using the dual drainage model Iber-SWMM. 39th IAHR World Congress, Granada, España. 19-24 June 2022.
- Cea, L., Anta, J., Puertas, J., Suárez, J., Naves, J., & Sañudo, E. (2022). Large scale facilities for urban drainage and flood experiments at the Hydraulics Laboratory of the CITEEC. Univ. A Coruña. 1st Symposium on Urban Flood Experiments, Lyon, France, 1-2 September 2022.
- Sañudo, E., Cea, L., & Puertas, J. (2022). Acoplamiento de los modelos Iber y SWMM para la modelización 2D/1D de inundaciones pluviales urbanas. Congreso FLOODs, Ourense, Spain, 4-5 October 2022.
- Farfán-Durán, J. F., Heidari, A., Sañudo, E., Montalvo, C., Couckuyt, I., Dhaene, T., Puertas, J., & Cea, L. (2023). Optimization of distributed models using evolutionary algorithms and surrogate modeling. 40th IAHR World Congress, Vienna, Austria, 21-25 August 2023.
- Reguerio, M., García-Alén, G., Naves, J., Sañudo, E., Cea, L., Puertas, S., Vila, G., Pena, L., Puertas, J. (2023). Disseminating flood results to non-technical stakeholders using Hybrid Physical-digital Twins. 40th IAHR World Congress, Vienna, Austria. 21-25 August 2023.
- Sañudo, E. & Cea, L. (2024). Pluvial flood modelling in urban areas. Advances in flood modelling and forecasting Conference. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, 1-2 February 2024.
- Sañudo, E. (2022). Experiments in a large-scale urban drainage physical model for the validation of 2D/1D numerical models – SEMINAR in CWS University of Exeter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiSHkZSmidQ&t=421s.
SATURNO in the Media
The media recognition highlights the commitment to utilizing scientific advancements for the betterment of socity:
People
- Luis Cea | luis.cea@udc.es
- Jerónimo Puertas | jeronimo.puertas@udc.es
- Luis Pena | luis.pena@udc.es
- Ignacio Fraga | ignacio.fraga@udc.es
- Juan Farfán | j.farfan@udc.es
- Gabriela Vila | gabriela.vila.sanchez@udc.es
- Esteban Sañudo | e.sanudo@udc.es
- Gonzalo García-Alén | g.glores@udc.es
- Orlando García-Feal | orlando@uvigo.es