Susana Ochoa-Rodriguez

Rain++

Urban catchments are typically characterised by high spatial variability and fast runoff processes resulting in short response times. Hydrological analysis of such catchments requires high resolution precipitation and catchment information to properly represent catchment response. This study investigated the impact of rainfall input resolution on t...

Following extensive surface water flooding (SWF) in England in summer 2007, progress has been made in improving the management and prediction of this type of flooding. A rainfall threshold-based Extreme Rainfall Alert (ERA) service was launched in 2009 and superseded in 2011 by the Surface Water Flood Risk Assessment (SWFRA). Through survey respons...

Rainfall estimates of the highest possible accuracy and resolution are required for urban hydrological applications, given the small size and fast response which characterise urban catchments. While radar rainfall estimates have the advantage of well capturing the spatial structure of rainfall fields and its variation in time, the commonly availabl...

Gauge-based radar rainfall adjustment techniques have been widely used to improve the applicability of radar rainfall estimates to large-scale hydrological modelling. However, their use for urban hydrological applications is limited as they were mostly developed based upon Gaussian approximations and therefore tend to smooth off so-called "singular...

The applicability of the operational radar and raingauge networks for urban hydrology is insufficient. Radar rainfall estimates provide a good description of the spatiotemporal variability of rainfall; however, their accuracy is in general insufficient. It is therefore necessary to adjust radar measurements using raingauge data, which provide accur...

This book presents the advancements made in applied metrology in the field of Urban Drainage and Storm water Management over the past two decades in scientific research as well as in practical applications. Given the broadness of this subject (measuring principles, uncertainty in data, data validation, data storage and communication, design, mainte...

FloodCitiSense aims at developing an urban pluvial flood early warning service for, but also by citizens and city authorities, building upon the state-of-the-art knowledge, methodologies and smart technologies provided by research units and private companies. FloodCitiSense targets the co-creation of this innovative public service in an urban livin...

Radar-rain gauge merging techniques have been widely used to improve the applicability of radar and rain gauge rainfall estimates by combining their advantages, while partially overcoming their individual weaknesses. Despite significant research in this area, guidance on the suitability of, and factors affecting merging techniques at the fine spati...

PREMESSA La variabilità spaziale e temporale della pioggia gioca un ruolo fondamentale nella determinazione della risposta idrologica del sistema, specialmente in ambito urbano, dove, a causa dell'elevata urbanizzazione, la formazione di deflussi superficiali è particolarmente veloce ed intensa. Negli ultimi decenni, nuove tecnologie e strumenti so...

Rainfall variability in space and time, in relation to catchment characteristics and model complexity, plays an important role in explaining the sensitivity of hydrological response in urban areas. In this work we present a new approach to classify rainfall variability in space and time and we use this classification to investigate rainfall aggrega...

Rainfall variability in space and time, in relation to catchment characteristics and model complexity, plays an important role in explaining the sensitivity of hydrological response in urban areas. In this work we present a new approach to classify rainfall variability in space and time and we use this classification to investigate rainfall aggrega...

Sewer inlet structures are vital components of urban drainage systems and their operational conditions can largely affect the overall performance of the system. However, their hydraulic behaviour and the way in which it is affected by clogging is often overlooked in urban drainage models, thus leading to misrepresentation of system performance and,...

Fractal analysis relies on scale invariance and the concept of fractal dimension enables one to characterize and quantify the space filled by a geometrical set exhibiting complex and tortuous patterns. Fractal tools have been widely used in hydrology but seldom in the specific context of urban hydrology. In this paper, fractal tools are used to ana...

The high variability in space and time of rainfall is one of the main aspects that influence hydrological response and generation of pluvial flooding. This phenomenon has a bigger impact in urban areas, where response is usually faster and flow peaks are typically higher, due to the high degree of imperviousness. Previous researchers have investiga...

Fractal analysis relies on scale invariance and the concept of fractal dimension enables to characterise and quantify the space filled by a geometrical set exhibiting complex and tortuous patterns. Fractal tools have been widely used in hydrology but seldom in the specific context of urban hydrology. In this paper fractal tools are used to analyse...

Urban stormwater models can be semi-distributed (SD) or fully distributed (FD). SD models are based on subcatchment units with various land use types, where rainfall is applied and runoff volumes are estimated and routed. FD models are based on the two dimensional (2D) discretization of the overland surface, which has a finer resolution with each g...

Gauge-based radar rainfall adjustment techniques have been widely used to improve the applicability of radar rainfall estimates to large-scale hydrological modelling. However, their use for urban hydrological applications is limited as they were mostly developed based upon Gaussian approximations and therefore tend to smooth off so-called "singular...

It is a common practice to assign the return period of a given storm event to the urban pluvial flood event that such storm generates. However, this approach may be inappropriate as rainfall events with the same return period can produce different urban pluvial flooding events, i.e., with different associated flood extent, water levels and return p...

Urban drainage models comprise four main components: rainfall, rainfall-runoff, overland flow and sewer flow modules. The rainfall-runoff module can be either semi-distributed (i.e. based upon sub-catchments units through which rainfall is applied to the model and at which runoff volumes are estimated), or fully distributed (with rainfall inputs ap...

This study investigates the impact of rainfall estimates of different spatial resolutions on the hydraulic outputs of the models of four of the EU RainGain project's pilot locations (the Cranbrook catchment (UK), the Herent catchment (Belgium), the Morée‐Sausset catchment (France) and the Kralingen District (The Netherlands)). Two storm events, one...

This paper presents an approach to enhance the role of local stakeholders in dealing with urban floods. The concept is based on the DIANE-CM project (Decentralised Integrated Analysis and Enhancement of Awareness through Collaborative Modelling and Management of Flood Risk) of the 2nd ERANET CRUE funding initiative. The main objective of the projec...

Historically, flood risk management in Europe and around the world has mainly focused on fluvial and coastal flooding; however, recent events have revealed the imminent risk imposed by urban pluvial flooding (also known as surface water flooding) and therefore the need for improved management of flooding from all sources. According to the UK Govern...

A nowcasting model coupled with an urban drainage model is used in this study to assess the forecasting of pluvial floods in urban areas. The deterministic nowcasting model used in this paper is part of the Met Office STEPS (Short-Term Ensemble Prediction System) system, and the hydraulic model is run based on the ID/ID dual drainage simulation sch...

This paper presents an approach to enhance the role of local stakeholders in dealing with urban floods. The concept is based on the DIANE-CM project (Decentralised Integrated Analysis and Enhancement of Awareness through Collaborative Modelling and Management of Flood Risk) of the 2nd ERANET CRUE funding initiative. The main objective of the projec...

This paper presents the main findings and lessons learned from the development and implementation of a new methodology for collaborative modelling, social learning and social acceptance of flood risk management technologies. The proposed methodology entails three main phases: (1) stakeholder analysis and engagement; (2) improvement of urban pluvial...

A more reliable flood forecasting could benefit from higher-resolution rainfall forecasts as inputs. However, the prediction lead time of the operational rainfall forecasting models will substantially diminish while sub-hourly (e.g., 5-min) rainfall forecasting is required. A method that integrates the SVM (Support Vector Machine) and Cascade-based...

For reliable prediction of urban pluvial flooding it is essential to have reliable spatial and temporal rainfall prediction at an appropriate scale. Radar data are considered to be the most reliable. However, many urban catchments do not have access to radar data. This paper presents a new methodology for rainfall forecasting based on a network of...

Short-term surface flood modelling requires reliable estimation of the distribution of floods over urban catchments with sufficient lead time in order to provide timely warnings. In this paper new improvements to the traditional Support Vector Machine (SVM) prediction technique for rainfall prediction are presented. The results obtained using the n...

In order to effectively prevent, mitigate and manage urban pluvial flooding, it is necessary to accurately model and predict the spatial and temporal distribution of both rainfall and surface flooding. A number of different modelling and prediction techniques have been applied to three UK case studies. The case studies illustrated potential improve...

The current European Directive for Flood Risk Management (FRM) requires a demand-driven approach in which policy makers work together with practitioners and the general public in preparation of FRM plans and actions. In that context, the DIANE-CM project, funded by the 2nd ERANET-CRUE initiative proposes an innovative approach which brings the conv...

Water distribution system minimum-cost design is probably the most commonly addressed modeling problem in hydraulic engineering. In the last decades, metaheuristic algorithms have been established as the most effective methods to solve this problem. However, because of their stochastic nature, a huge number of hydraulic simulations are needed befor...

Water Distribution System operation involves two issues that have large economic repercussions: pipe renewal and rehabilitation and reduction of Non-Revenue Water (NRW). This paper presents an algorithm that, based on the unitary power concept, selects the most important pipes to be replaced in order to reduce the dissipated power and the NRW, whil...

Water Distribution System operation involves two issues that have large economic repercussions: pipe renewal and rehabilitation and reduction of Non-Revenue Water (NRW). This paper presents an algorithm that, based on the unitary power concept, selects the most important pipes to be replaced in order to reduce the dissipated power and the NRW, whil...

This paper presents a new prioritisation approach to the problem of rehabilitation of water distribution systems. It consists in a algorithm that, based on the resilience index and on the unitary power concepts, selects the most important pipes to be replaced in order to achieve two main objectives: first, to reduce loss of water due to leakage by...

This paper deals with three topics related to the skeletonization of water distribution networks: demand aggregation, skeletonization methodologies and water quality equivalence of reduced models. First, different hydraulic and geometric criteria together with a fuzzy logic-based software are used to aggregate demands into a smaller number of point...

This article presents a new tool that supports real-time corrective maintenance of water distribution systems (WDS). This tool integrates Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with hydraulic modeling of WDS, providing a graphic interface in which, in the case of a failure, the operator can select the damaged pipe (usually a burst pipe), obtaining th...

In the first place, this paper presents an examination of the effects of missing cadastral information on the modeling and calibration of water distribution networks (WDN). For this purpose, cadastral errors were artificially introduced to the hydraulic models of the WDN of three cities of the province of Valle del Cauca (Colombia), with population...

This paper presents a methodology that uses the concept of resilience to generate skeletonized or reduced models of Water Distribution Networks (WDN) with a significantly smaller number of pipes in comparison with the prototype, but that still can simulate, in a very precise manner, the hydraulic and water quality characteristics of the real networ...

Water Distribution Network enlargements are caused by growth of demands inside the network and by geographical growth of the network itself. For a water supply system operator, it is very important to have optimum designs of such enlargements and carry these works out at a minimum cost and in a way that makes it possible to satisfy the new demands...