Date of Completion

12-13-2017

Embargo Period

12-13-2017

Advisors

Emmanouil Anagnostou, Guiling Wang, Xinyi Shen

Field of Study

Environmental Engineering

Degree

Master of Science

Open Access

Open Access

Abstract

In the United States, many river floodplains contain critical infrastructure that is vulnerable to extreme hydrologic events. These structures are designed based on flood frequency analysis aimed at quantifying the magnitude of the extreme events. However, many floodplains are ungauged or poorly gauged, making flood frequency analysis significantly uncertain. This research topic focuses on estimating flood frequency peaks for an ungauged critical infrastructure within Connecticut’s Naugatuck River Basin utilizing a physically based approach consisting of a distributed rainfall-runoff model forced by long-term reanalysis meteorological data and a hydraulic model driven by high-resolution LiDAR derived terrain elevation data. The hydrologic model reanalysis is used to derive 50-, 100-, 200-, and 500-year return period flood peaks, which are then used to drive one-dimensional HEC-RAS unsteady hydraulic model to estimate the inundation risk of a sub-station and evaluate hydraulic structure operation strategies to reduce inundation risk of the downstream infrastructure. This study illustrates the potential of the physically based approach to creating flood maps in an ungauged basin and demonstrates the effects of different water management scenarios on the flood risk of the downstream infrastructure.

Major Advisor

Emmanouil Anagnostou

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