MFI: Multi-Sourced Flood Inventories for Actual and Natural Conditions

Two multi-sourced, spatially distributed flood inventories are compiled to archive actual and natural flood events by integrating information from in-situ observations, remote-sensing retrievals, hydrological model simulations, and high-quality precipitation products.

1. Introduction

MFI consist of two types of multi-sourced flood event inventories (MFI) for all river basins across the contiguous United States covering the period 1998-2013 on daily and sub-catchment scale. These archives integrate flood information from in-situ observations, remote-sensing observations, hydrological model simulations, and five high quality precipitation products.

The two types of flood inventory are considered to be valuable in various different research and studies. The first inventory (MFI-Actual) includes all actual floods that occurred in the presence of flood protection infrastructures, while the second, “natural (undefended)” inventory (MFI-Natural) reconstructs the possible “historical” floods without flood protection, which could be more directly influenced by climate variation.

2. Methodology

Schematic view of the development of the multi-sourced flood inventories.

3. Results

● Spatial Distribution

The distribution of flood event number from (a) actual and (b) natural flood.


Distribution of flood events in 17 major river basins under (a) regulated and (b) natural scenarios, and (c) events per sub-catchment of both.

● Temporal Distribution

The variations of flood events originated from each data source and inventory: (a) mean monthly count for each data source, (b) mean monthly count for each inventory, (c) mean yearly count for each inventory, and (d) monthly number of flood events in South Atlantic-Gulf and Texas-Gulf Basin against Niño 3.4 index.


Peak months of flood frequency at sub-catchment scale based on (a) actual and (b) natural inventories.

Download
Published version:
      ● CONUS (1998-2013)
Updated versions:
      ● CONUS (1998-2019)

Reference
Huang, Z., Wu, H., Adler, R. F., Schumann, G., Gourley, J. J., Kettner, A., & Nanding, N. (2021). Multisourced Flood Inventories over the Contiguous United States for Actual and Natural Conditions, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 102(6), E1133-E1149.

Contact
Dr. Huan Wu    huanwu@umd.edu