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Flood Modelling

Access our comprehensive list of data sources and datasets to find out how to obtain the data you need to build different types of flood models.

Flood modelling forms a vital part of understanding flood risk and hazards. This means undertaking the evaluation and design of flood mitigation solutions that address both current and potential future flood risk conditions. Flood modelling can also be used to provide flood forecasts, enabling communities to be prepared for and respond to impending danger.

Key facts

  • Flood Modeller allows you to seamlessly model rivers, floodplains and urban drainage systems

  • Uses river, rainfall and sea level data, alongside LiDAR, to predict the probability of flooding

  • Flood Modeller is suitable for a wide range of modelling applications, from calculating simple backwater profiles to modelling entire catchments

  • Flood Modeller’s 2D solvers are designed to work either standalone or can be dynamically linked to the 1D river or 1D urban solvers

  • Flood Modeller’s intuitive GIS-like interface provides a wide-range of model building tools, as well as pre and post-processing operations

Using historical and real-time river, rainfall and sea level data, alongside data that represents the physical environment, the likelihood and probability of flooding for a specific area can be assessed.

 

Whether you need to build a simple 1D model of a rural river channel, develop a 1D-2D linked model for an urban area, or undertake integrated catchment modelling which incorporates sewer networks and other drainage systems, Flood Modeller has the functionality to meet your needs.


Flood Modeller can be applied to a wide range of engineering and environmental flood modelling applications. Its intuitive GIS interface provides a wide-range of model building tools, as well as pre and post-processing operations.


Its industry-leading 1D river solver provides a comprehensive range of methods for simulating flows and levels in open channels, floodplains, reservoirs and estuaries. It provides more than 40 hydraulic structures, including numerous bridge, culvert and weir types. 


The latest hydrological methods are also provided as standard. Any hydrograph can be input to the software to take into account local hydrological methods. Direct rainfall inputs can also be applied.

Flood Modeller's 1D urban solver, based on US EPA SWMM, allows users to combine surface and subsurface flow to obtain a detailed and integrated understanding of flood risk in urban areas, directly within Flood Modeller’s powerful user interface. It enables users to develop integrated catchment and system-based solutions within a single software solution.

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Extensive colour ramp options for extent, depth, water level and velocity data (including time series data) make it easy to understand your results and how they evolve over time. 

Flood Modeller provides four advanced 2D numerical solvers which are used to calculate water depth and ‘depth averaged’ velocity on a grid. 


The 2D ADI solver is a robust solution which can be applied to fluvial, overland, estuarine and coastal modelling applications where the flow is not rapidly changing. It is used globally for surface water modelling, local and catchment scale assessments, flood mapping, embankment and asset failure and other flood risk management studies.

The 2D TVD solver provides accurate representation of 2D ‘shocks’ (rapid changes in water surface profile) and is also capable of modelling subcritical flow. It is regularly used for modelling dam breach, levee/embankment failure, very steep catchments, or flow down spillways as it generates more stable and smoother solutions as it’s particularly suited to modelling steep changes in velocity and water level.


The 2D FAST solver is an innovative flood inundation modelling tool designed to allow quick assessment of flooding using simplified hydraulics. It provides results in seconds or minutes as opposed to hours or days, which are up to 1,000 times faster than traditional 2D models.

The 2D GPU solver harnesses the power of modern graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware to provide detailed 2D modelling results fast - up to 96% faster. It is compatible with NVIDIA GPU hardware and delivers significant speed increases, whilst retaining similar levels of detail and accuracy, when compared to the standard 2D solvers. 

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