Designing for People’s Safety on Flooded Streets: Uncertainties and the Influence of the Cross-Section Shape, Roughness and Slopes on Hazard Criteria

Abstract

Designing for exceedance events consists in designing a continuous route for overland flow to deal with flows exceeding the sewer system’s capacity and to mitigate flooding risk. A review is carried out here on flood safety/hazard criteria, which generally establish thresholds for the water depth and flood velocity, or a relationship between them. The effects of the cross-section shape, roughness and slope of streets in meeting the criteria are evaluated based on equations, graphical results and one case study. An expedited method for the verification of safety criteria based solely on flow is presented, saving efforts in detailing models and increasing confidence in the results from simplified models. The method is valid for 0.1 m2/s ≤h.V≤ 0.5 m2/s. The results showed that a street with a 1.8% slope, K≈ 75 m1/3s−1 and a rectangular cross-section complies with the threshold h.V = 0.3 m2/s for twice the flow of a street with the same width but with a conventional cross-section shape. The flow will be four times greater for a 15% street slope. The results also highlighted that the flood flows can vary significantly along the streets depending on the sewers’ roughness and the flow transfers between the major and minor systems, such that the effort detailing a street’s cross-section must be balanced with all of the other sources of uncertainty.