Using unmanned aerial vehicle and volunteered geographic information to sophisticate urban flood modelling

Abstract. Sophisticated flood simulation in urban areas is a challenging task due to the difficulties in data acquisition and model verification. This study incorporates three rapid-growing technologies, i.e. volunteered geographic information (VGI), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and computational flood simulation (CFS) to reconstruct the flash flood event occurred in 14 June 2015, GongGuan, Taipei. The high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) generated by a UAV and the real-time VGI photos acquired from social network are served to establish and validate the CFS model, respectively. The DEM data are resampled based on two grid sizes to evaluate the influence of terrain resolution on flood simulations. The results show that flood scenario can be more accurately modelled as DEM resolution increases with better agreement between simulation and observation in terms of flood occurrence time and water depth. The incorporation of UAV and VGI lower the barrier of sophisticated CFS and shows great potential in flood impact and loss assessment in urban areas.