Probabilistic flood risk assessment of urban areas protected by levees

Floods are an increasing threat worldwide causing widespread destruction, loss of life, economic damages and social impacts. Contributing factors include population density growth in urban areas and increasing impervious areas which disrupts the natural hydrological cycle. Accurate flood risk assessments are therefore required to help cities and institutions to better prepare inhabitants to the occurrence of such events. In most areas sensitive to floods, defence systems (such as dams, levees, dikes, etc.) are already in place. Levees are the most common structures for flood protection, however, due to uncertainties in their design and hydrological and hydraulic factor, their behaviour requires more research to better quantify this uncertainty and determine their resilience to flood events. The current research project aims to provide an integrated method of probabilistic flood risk assessment for a location in Toronto, Canada. This will include developing a new probabilistic levee failure assessment method that accounts for different failure mechanisms and and to quantify the social and economic impacts of floods to produce a probabilistic flood risk maps.

Faculty Supervisor:

Usman Khan

Student:

Partner:

INRAE ??Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Research Centre

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Water; Sustainability & the Environment; Environmental Science and Technology

University:

York University

Program: