Assessing national exposure to and impact of glacial lake outburst floods considering uncertainty under data sparsity

Chen, Huili; Liang, Qiuhua; Zhao, Jiaheng; Maharjan, Sudan Bikash

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-733-2025

Articles | Volume 29, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-733-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-733-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 29, issue 3

Research article

|

07 Feb 2025

Research article |

| 07 Feb 2025

Assessing national exposure to and impact of glacial lake outburst floods considering uncertainty under data sparsity

Huili Chen, Qiuhua Liang, Jiaheng Zhao, and Sudan Bikash Maharjan

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-733-2025-supplement

Data sets

Land cover of Nepal 2010 ICIMOD http://rds.icimod.org/Home/DataDetail?metadataId=9224

572 Hydropower Projects Nepal Hydropower Portal https://hydro.naxa.com.np/core/datasets/

OpenStreetMap data for Nepal OpenStreetMap contributors http://download.geofabrik.de/asia/nepal.html

Model code and software

High-Performance Integrated Hydrodynamic Modelling System (HiPIMS-CUDA) HEMLab https://github.com/HEMLab/HiPIMS-CUDA

Short summary

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) can cause serious damage. To assess their risks, we developed an innovative framework using remote sensing, Bayesian models, flood modelling, and open-source data. This enables us to evaluate GLOFs on a national scale, despite limited data and challenges accessing high-altitude lakes. We evaluated dangerous lakes in Nepal, identifying those most at risk. This work is crucial for understanding GLOF risks, and the framework can be transferred to other areas.