Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 36 (2011) 281291

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Physics and Chemistry of the Earth

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Benchmarking urban ood models of varying complexity and scale using high
resolution terrestrial LiDAR data
Timothy J. Fewtrell a,, Alastair Duncan b, Christopher C. Sampson c, Jeffrey C. Neal c, Paul D. Bates c
a

Willis Research Network, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, BS8 1SS, UK
Geomatics Group, Environment Agency, Phoenix House, Lower Bristol Road, Bath, BA2 9ES, UK
c
School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, BS8 1SS, UK
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 28 October 2010
Received in revised form 6 December 2010
Accepted 14 December 2010
Available online 21 December 2010
Keywords:
Hydraulic modelling
LYNX
Terrestrial LiDAR
Urban ooding
Surface water
Urban drainage

a b s t r a c t
This paper describes benchmark testing of a diffusive and an inertial formulation of the de St. Venant
equations implemented within the LISFLOOD-FP hydraulic model using high resolution terrestrial LiDAR
data. The models are applied to a hypothetical ooding scenario in a section of Alcester, UK which experienced signicant surface water ooding in the June and July oods of 2007 in the UK. The sensitivity of
water elevation and velocity simulations to model formulation and grid resolution are analyzed. The differences in depth and velocity estimates between the diffusive and inertial approximations are within
10% of the simulated value but inertial effects persist at the wetting front in steep catchments. Both models portray a similar scale dependency between 50 cm and 5 m resolution which reiterates previous ndings that errors in coarse scale topographic data sets are signicantly larger than differences between
numerical approximations. In particular, these results conrm the need to distinctly represent the camber and curbs of roads in the numerical grid when simulating surface water ooding events. Furthermore,
although water depth estimates at grid scales coarser than 1 m appear robust, velocity estimates at these
scales seem to be inconsistent compared to the 50 cm benchmark. The inertial formulation is shown to
reduce computational cost by up to three orders of magnitude at high resolutions thus making simulations at this scale viable in practice compared to diffusive models. For the rst time, this paper highlights
the utility of high resolution terrestrial LiDAR data to inform small-scale ood risk management studies.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Recent studies on the effects of urbanization on the hydrologic
response of drainage networks have examined the impact of urban
drainage on ooding in terms of drainage network structure
(Meierdiercks et al., 2010), drainage network efciency (Aronica
and Lanza, 2005), drainage pathway distribution (Leito et al.,
2009) and model resolution (Schubert et al., 2008; Fewtrell et al.,
2008). The proliferation of recent modelling efforts is a direct consequence of large pluvial ood events over urban areas (e.g. Dead
Run in Baltimore, US in July 2004 (Ntelekos et al., 2008) or ooding
in Hull, UK in summer 2007) and the associated perceived increased risk from such high rainfall events. Indeed, the Environment Agency of England and Wales (EA) estimated that twothirds of the 57,000 homes affected in the June and July 2007
oods in the UK were ooded from surface water runoff exceeding
the capacity of the drainage system (DEFRA, 2008). In addition, the
Pitt Review (Pitt, 2008) noted that although the UKs understanding of ooding risks from coastal and uvial sources is well
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: t.fewtrell@bristol.ac.uk (T.J. Fewtrell).
1474-7065/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pce.2010.12.011

advanced, information related to surface water ooding risk is

limited.
Leito et al. (2009) note that bearing in mind the current industrial best practice, there is considerable scope and need for improving the methods for quantifying risk from surface water ooding in
urban areas. A number of studies have assessed the importance of
model resolution for simulating surface water propagation
(Schubert et al., 2008; Fewtrell et al., 2008; Gallegos et al., 2009),
while others have investigated the necessary process representation for such ooding events (Hunter et al., 2008; Pender and
Nelz, 2010) and some authors have considered the sub-surface
drainage component coupled to a surface ow model (Hsu et al.,
2000). The rst set of studies initially concluded that the representation of the minimum distance between buildings is of paramount
importance for the representation of surface ow, which equates to
510 m. Gallegos et al. (2009), however, note that three computational elements are required across a street in a dynamic
unstructured model to provide an appropriate compromise between computational cost and accuracy, albeit that this led to a
model resolution of 5 m in their application. The studies addressing process representation in models suggest that while simplied
diffusive models provide plausible results, there can be signicant

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differences in ood extent between the diffusive models and more

complex dynamic models in steep catchments where the ow is
inertia dominated (Hunter et al., 2008). Few studies have considered the joint inuence of model resolution and process representation for urban ood events. In addition, although Schubert et al.
(2008) considered mesh resolutions ner than 1 m, the underlying
digital elevation models (DEMs) used to drive these studies have
all been derived from topographic sampling products collected at
2 m resolution or coarser. As such, most work has concentrated
on assessing the need to resolve buildings within urban DEMs
rather than considering the detailed street network and microtopography; Gallegos et al. (2009) being the notable exception.
Airborne LiDAR systems have been enhanced in the last
10 years from systems with laser pulse rates of 10100 kHz leading to footprint improvements from 3 m to 25 cm, reducing vertical elevation errors in the process down to 5 cm root mean
square error (RMSE). More recently, terrestrial LiDAR systems have
started to be employed to capture even more detailed (i.e. 1
3 cm horizontal resolution) 3D point cloud data for applications
in engineering, transportation and urban planning (Barnea and
Filin, 2008; Lichti et al., 2008). Despite the fact that anecdotal
and modelling evidence of urban ooding processes suggests that
small scale features (i.e. kerbs, road camber and drains) can have
a signicant impact on ood propagation, such high resolution
data from terrestrial laser scanners has yet to be used in urban
hydraulic models. In addition, such small scale features can be difcult to distinguish in airborne LiDAR products as they may be
smaller than the resolution of the instrument and because airborne
instruments necessarily have a downward look direction. Terrestrial LiDAR systems mounted on moving vehicles may provide a
solution for resolving such small scale features over side areas
appropriate for ood risk management. In this paper, the utility
of the high resolution terrestrial LiDAR data for simulating surface
water ooding is analyzed. This provides a mechanism to evaluate
the role of the street network, as opposed to purely building location, in modulating the propagation of surface water in urban
areas. In addition, using numerical models of varying complexity
provides a method for assessing the important physical processes
and analyzing the interplay between model resolution and numerical complexity at such small scales.

2. Data availability and collection

2.1. Site and event description
During the oods of July 2007 in the United Kingdom, Alcester
in Warwickshire experienced considerable ooding from the Rivers
Alne and Arrow, in addition to ooding from surface water derived
from excess rainfall as the local drainage system was overwhelmed. The combination of high river levels and high rainfall
accumulations (6080 mm in 12 h) led to ooding of 110 properties although the Environment Agency (EA) in the UK estimates
that a further 200 properties were successfully protected by the
current defences. Furthermore, the EA estimates that 260 properties in Alcester lie within the 1-in-100 year oodplain. In response
to this ooding, the EA plans to raise the height of the ood wall in
Alcester to ensure that it is above the July 2007 river levels and
there are additional plans to install two new pumping stations to
alleviate the ood risk from surface water. The section of Alcester
chosen for this study lies in an area susceptible to ooding both
from the River Arrow and surface water overwhelming the drainage system. The area is 0.11 km2 consisting of four streets and a
number of cul-de-sacs feeding off them (Fig. 1).
Although the area is prone to ooding from uvial and pluvial
sources, there are no reliable estimates of ood volumes for an ob-

served ood event in the area. Therefore, the inow boundary conditions for this test case were derived using the depthduration
frequency curves for estimating rainfall from the Flood Estimation
Handbook (FEH, Institute of Hydrology (1999)). The EA in England
and Wales is currently mapping surface water ooding risk using a
1-in-200 year return period 30-min rainfall storm. For this study,
we assume that the 200-year 30-min rainfall (47 mm) is collected
over a drainage area of 100  100 m upstream of the inow point
(see Fig. 1) to represent the ow coming from a blocked sewer
draining a small catchment (Fig. 2). The nal assumption in this
study is that the drainage system is operating at capacity such that
water on the surface does not interact with the drains at the road
side. The lack of observed data of the ooding at this test site
means that the ensuing modelling exercise takes the form of a sensitivity analysis.

2.2. LiDAR collection and processing

The terrestrial laser scanning system used for gathering the ultra high resolution elevation data for Alcester was the LYNX Mobile
Mapper system distributed by Optech Incorporated and the data
were collected by the Environment Agency Geomatics Group. The
LYNX Mobile Mapper consists of two 100 kHz LiDAR instruments, each with 360 eld of view, mounted on a rigid platform
on the back of a Land Rover. Two GPS receivers are mounted on
the roof of the car as well, one at the front and one on the rigid
platform at the back. The GPS system uses the principle of real time
kinematic (RTK) navigation whereby the roving LYNX unit calculates a relative position based on a known base station with positional accuracies of 5 cm leading to vertical accuracies of 5 cm.
The system is capable of recording four simultaneous measurements per laser pulse which results in a point cloud density of
1 point per centimetre when driving at 30 mph.
The terrestrial LiDAR point cloud is processed into a DEM using
proprietary processing algorithms developed by the EA drawing on
experience from years of processing airborne LiDAR data in addition to work by Mason and others (Cobby et al., 2003; Mason
et al., 2003, 2007). The key aspect of LiDAR segmentation is to separate ground laser hits from surface object returns. This is achieved
using classication algorithms in an iterative procedure in order to
progressively remove surface objects from the underlying surface
topography. In this particular case, the TerraScan software package
was used. The resulting surface was aggregated to a raster DEM at
10 cm resolution. The 10 cm resolution DEM (11,606,900 cells) was
then further resampled to Dx = 25 cm (1,856,000 cells), 50 cm
(464,000), 1 m (116,000), 2 m (29,000) and 5 m (4640) to investigate the scale dependency of ooding at this site.

3. Modelling framework
Hunter et al. (2008) demonstrated the need to benchmark
hydraulic models of varying complexity to fully understand the effect of process representations on the simulation of ood ows
through urban environments. Further evidence from the authors
suggests it proved difcult to ensure that each model interpreted
the model inputs and boundary conditions in the same way. Similarly, work on the EA benchmarking study (Pender and Nelz,
2010) suggests participants encountered similar problems of
ensuring consistency between models in the construction of each
test case. Incorporating different numerical solution schemes into
a single computational code reduces any such ambiguity in model
setup. Therefore, the LISFLOOD-FP model is used here as there are a
number solution schemes of varying complexity implemented
within the same numerical code (see Bates and De Roo, 2000; Hun-

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Fig. 1. MasterMap of Alcester with 10 cm LYNX data overplotted in the model domain highlighting the location of the sewer surcharge inow point and the control points.

3.1. Diffusive LISFLOOD-FP

Building on early work by (Zanobetti et al., 1968, 1970), a number of authors have developed hydraulic models of ooding based
on simplied versions of the full 2D de St. Venant equations
(Estrela and Quintas, 1994; Bates and De Roo, 2000; Bradbrook
et al., 2004; Yu and Lane, 2006b). Bates and De Roo (2000) developed a simple storage cell model (LISFLOOD-FP) solving an analytical approximation of the 2D shallow water equations based on
Mannings equation:
5=3

Q txi;j

hflow

i;j

hi1;j  hi;j
Dx

!1=2

Dy

where Q is the discharge [L3 T1], hi,j is the depth of water in cell
(i, j), how is the depth of water available to ow [L] and Dt is the
model time step [T], Dx is the model grid resolution [L] and n is
the Mannings friction coefcient [L1/3 T]. Water depths are subsequently updated using the nite difference discretised form of the
continuity equation using discharge between cells, as:
tDt

hi;j
Fig. 2. Inow boundary conditions.

ter et al., 2005; Bates et al., 2010). The numerical schemes evaluated in this study are detailed below.

hi;j Dt

Q txi1;j  Q txi;j Q tyi;j1  Q tyi;j

Dx2

Subsequent research using this class of model highlighted some

deciencies in practice. For instance, the storage cell approximation could not be calibrated to acceptably simulate both wave travel time and inundation extent for a single parameter set (Horritt
and Bates, 2001) and the model lacked meaningful sensitivity to
oodplain friction specication (Horritt and Bates, 2002). As a

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result, Hunter et al. (2005) proposed a stability criterion for the LISFLOOD-FP implementation of Mannings equation based on an analogue of the diffusion wave equation, as in Eq. (3):

Dt

 1=2
 1=2 !
Dx2
2n Dh
2n Dh
min 5=3   ; 5=3  
4
hflow Dx
hflow Dy

Although this yielded a model with realistic friction sensitivity,

it was found that the optimum stable time step reduced quadratically with increasing model resolution. Therefore, for the ne resolution (110 m) grids required for application of hydraulic models
to urban areas (Yu and Lane, 2006a; Fewtrell et al., 2008) simulation costs become so large that storage cell codes actually proved
slower than full 2D solutions of the shallow water equations
(Fewtrell et al., 2009).
3.2. Inertial LISFLOOD-FP
In response to the computational cost of the diffusive form of
the de St. Venant equations, Bates et al. (2010) developed a simple
inertial formulation of the two dimensional shallow water equations. The inertial model formulation was incorporated into the
LISFLOOD-FP model code and signicantly increases the computational efciency of current storage cell type modelling methods
(Bates et al., 2010). Flow between neighbouring oodplain cells is
calculated as in Eq. (4):
t

qt  ghflow Dt DhDxz
qtDt 

10=3 
t
t
1 ghflow Dtn2 jqt j= hflow

where q is the ow per unit width [L2 T1], g is the acceleration due
to gravity [L T2], how is the depth of water available to ow [L] and
Dt is the model time step [T], Dx is the model grid resolution [L], z is
the bed elevation [L], h is the water depth [L] and n is the Mannings
friction coefcient [L1/3 T]. Water depths are updated using Eq. (2)
above. The stability criterion for this numerical model is given by
the CourantFreidrichsLevy condition for shallow water ows
such that the stable model time step, Dt, is a function of the grid
resolution, Dx, and the maximum water depth, h, within the domain (Bates et al., 2010):

Dx
Dtmax a p
ght

where a varies between 0.2 and 0.7. Unlike previous diffusive storage cell models (e.g. Hunter et al., 2005), this stability constraint
yields time steps large enough that high resolution models of the
urban environment are computationally tractable (Bates et al.,
2010).
4. Results and discussion
Initially, the diffusive and inertial models were constructed at
Dx = 10 cm, 25 cm, 50 cm, 1 m, 2 m and 5 m resolutions. However,
due to computational expense of the diffusive formulation (Hunter
et al., 2005), the 10 and 25 cm models were excluded from the
analysis. Fig. 3 shows the propagation of the ood wave over the
50 cm terrestrial LiDAR DEM at four times (360, 900, 1800 and
7200 s) for the diffusive and inertial formulations of LISFLOOD-FP
and the difference between the two approximations. The water enters the domain at the simulated blocked drain in the north east
corner and ows down the main northsouth facing street. At
the outset, the ood is contained within the curbs; indeed the
water ows down one side of the road initially before spilling over
the raised central section and then owing down the other side of
the road. This ow pattern is due to the retention of the road cam-

ber within the DEM which has never before been captured by elevation products used in hydraulic modelling of oods. As the water
reaches the road junctions, it spreads out and ows down the roads
perpendicular to the main road before ponding in the low points
and at the extremities of the DEM. The ponding at the DEM edges
occurs because the boundaries of this model are specied as closed
and therein lies the inherent disadvantage of using terrestrial LiDAR products derived from a system mounted on a vehicle as data
only exists in line of sight from areas accessible by road. As such,
there is clear scope to fuse terrestrial LiDAR products with other
sources of digital elevation data such as airborne LiDAR or IfSAR
products to resolve topographic features outside the street
network.
As the ood wave propagates through the street network, there
are differences, albeit small, in the simulated water depths between the diffusive and inertial model. At each stage of the simulation, it is clear that the diffusive approximation is deeper at the
wetting front than the inertial model. The inertia that the body
of water needs to be overcome in the inertial formulation, not present in the diffusive form, to activate ow thus leading to the shallower water depths observed in Fig. 3. This physical attribute also
accounts for the deeper water at the top of the slope in the inertial
model after 900 s of simulation time. Once the inertia has been
overcome, water ows more readily down the street network creating shallower water depths at the northern extent of the domain
and deeper water on the roads after 1800 s. At the end of the simulation, the diffusive formulation is deeper by up to 0.015 m (2%
of the depth) throughout most of the domain but the inertial model
is up to 0.041 m deeper (6% of the depth) in the pond at the lowest point in the domain. The increased momentum caused by the
gravity terms in the inertial model (see Eq. (4)) is likely to reduce
the diffusive behaviour of the model and reduce ow perpendicular to the main slope and thus causing the deeper ponding at the
southern edge of the domain. The differences between the diffusive
and inertial model formulations throughout the entire simulation
are less than the errors associated with the underlying LiDAR data
from which the 50 cm DEM is derived. Indeed, the differences are
of similar relative magnitude to those found in previous studies
of these two formulations (Bates et al., 2010), but are signicantly
smaller than the differences found between other simplied models and models based on the full shallow water equations (Hunter
et al., 2008). Nevertheless, evidence from the latter study suggests
that working with models within the same numerical code will
minimise any differences in data interpretation and solely highlight differences between the numerical approximations, thus
allowing more concrete conclusions to be formed regarding model
capabilities and deciencies.
In order to analyze the global effect of model resolution on simulation results, the root mean squared difference (RMSD) between
the coarse models (1 m, 2 m and 5 m) and the benchmark, high resolution (50 cm) model for the diffusive and inertial models is computed (Fig. 4). As noted in previous studies on the inuence of
model resolution (Horritt and Bates, 2001; Yu and Lane, 2006a;
Fewtrell et al., 2008), there is noticeable reduction in model performance at coarse resolutions up to 0.065 m RMSD over the entire
domain in this case. The 1 and 2 m resolution models are within
the typical vertical error of terrestrial LiDAR data (5 cm RMSE)
whereas the 5 m model produces differences greater than this LiDAR error. Indeed, at 5 m resolution, the global RMSD is greater
than 10% of the maximum simulated water depth and of similar
magnitude to the errors found in Bates et al. (2010) for a wave
propagating over a planar surface and up a planar beach. As in
Fewtrell et al. (2008), the RMSD is actually describing differences
in relative submergence as the slopes in the topography are significantly greater than the gradient of the water surface. Furthermore,
the differences between the diffusive and inertial model formula-

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285

Fig. 3. Progression of ooding predicted by (a) the diffusive model and (b) the inertial model at various times throughout the simulation using the 50 cm DEM. The difference
between the ood depths from the two formulations is shown in panel (c).

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T.J. Fewtrell et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 36 (2011) 281291

(a)

(b)

Fig. 4. Evolution of the root mean squared difference between the benchmark Dx = 50 cm model and the coarser 1 m, 2 m and 5 m models throughout the simulation for the
(a) diffusive and (b) inertial model formulations.

tions at all resolutions are signicantly smaller than the errors

introduced by coarse representations of the topography.
Fig. 5 shows the evolution of water depths at the four control
points (see Fig. 1) throughout the simulation using the diffusive
approximation at grid resolutions of 50 cm, 1 m, 2 m and 5 m
and the difference between each resolution plotted on the underlying rows to evaluate the effect of grid resolution in more detail.
Point 1 represents an area of rapid transition of ow as water will
ow down the steep section of road whereas point 2 is a region of
ponding, due to its lower elevation and boundaries of the DEM. The
ow around point 3 is an area of shallow ow at the road edge as
most water ponds either around points 2 and 4 or at the southern
edge of the DEM. The top row of Fig. 5 shows that although this
event results from a 1-in-200 year rainfall event, the ow depths
along the streets are shallow ( K 0.2 m which is comparable to
the curb height) and depths do not exceed 0.5 m when ponded
which generally causes less than 10% damage to buildings (Apel
et al., 2009). Rows 24 of Fig. 5 show that coarse resolution DEMs
both under- and over-predict of water elevations and wave propagation speeds at the four control points. Water depths at control
point 1 are a translation and attenuation of the inow hydrograph
as it is positioned directly down slope of the surcharging sewer.
Water depths are well simulated in the 1 and 2 m models when
considering the high resolution 50 cm model as the benchmark.
However, in the 5 m model, the area retains more water after the
ood wave has receded which may be caused by the loss of localised connectivity by representing the road with fewer grid cells. At
point 2, the arrival time of the ood wave is later in the 2 and 5 m
models which is caused by the coarse representation of the road
network and associated lack of connectivity in the northern regions
of the DEM. A similar response is apparent in point 4 where significant attenuation of the ood wave in the 2 and 5 m models results
in lower ood depths initially and deeper ood depths at the end of
the simulation when compared to the 50 cm benchmark. Point 3
proves the most difcult to simulate in coarse resolution models
as the DEM elevation changes when resampling from ne to coarse
resolution grids are greater than the simulated shallow ow depths
in the 50 cm model, resulting in zero ow depths in the 5 m model.

A comparison of ood elevations at the four control points using

the diffusive and inertial approximation at multiple resolutions is
presented in Fig. 6. Firstly, it is clear that there are only very small
differences ( K 0.01 m) between the simulated water surface elevations at the same resolution using the diffusive and inertial
approximations. These differences are similar in relative magnitude to differences in water depths observed when comparing
the diffusive and inertial approximation on a larger volume ood
in Glasgow (Bates et al., 2010). Indeed, the differences are signicantly smaller than the error associated with the 10 cm elevation
data (5 cm) from which the DEMs in this study are derived. As observed in Fig. 4, there is a step change in the performance of both
the diffusive and inertial models between 2 m and 5 m grid resolution such that water elevations are over-predicted at the source
(point 1) and the nal ponding location (point 4) but under-predicted at point 2. Most importantly, the errors imposed by coarse
resolution DEMs are signicantly larger than the differences between numerical solutions suggesting that the quality of elevation
data is of paramount importance for simulating shallow ows in
urban environments. This result has been demonstrated by other
authors using different approaches (e.g. Nelz and Pender, 2006;
Hunter et al., 2008; Fewtrell et al., 2008) although has yet to be
demonstrated at the high resolution considered here. An analysis
of the representation of the road network in the underlying model
DEMs (Fig. 7) shows that there is a reduction in the number of
computational cells across the width of a street from 10 cells in
the 50 cm DEM to 3 cells in the 2 m DEM and 1 cell in the
5 m DEM. The step change in result quality corroborates results
from previous studies using unstructured grids (Gallegos et al.,
2009) regarding the number of computational cells required across
a street to accurately simulate ow propagation. However, it is
worth noting that ows in LISFLOOD-FP are limited to four Cartesian directions and the street network in this test case is largely
aligned in the diagonals. Therefore, a model at any scale representing a diagonal ow path with one cell width will increase ow path
length and thus reduce ood wave propagation speed. Fig. 7e displays an indicative cross-section of road elevations for the four grid
resolutions. At this particular site, the curbs and road camber are

T.J. Fewtrell et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 36 (2011) 281291

287

Fig. 5. (Top row) plots of simulated water depth over time at the four control points at Dx = 50 cm, 1 m, 2 m and 5 m using the diffusive formulation. Other plots (rows 24)
show simulated water depth from the plots on the top row minus simulated water levels from the other resolutions.

Fig. 6. Plots of simulated water elevation over time at the four control points at the four grid resolutions. The diffusive approximation is represented by a solid line and the
inertial approximation is represented by a dashed line. Note that when the dotted line is not visible, it is plotting directly below the solid line.

well dened up to 1 m resolution, the curbs remain apparent in the

2 m DEM but the road network becomes almost entirely aggregated out at the 5 m scale. This further supports the evidence
regarding controlling length scales in urban environments and
the need for good road denition in urban ood modelling
exercises.
Apel et al. (2009) recognize that recent studies of ood risk have
shown that estimates of economic loss caused by ooding have

shown that standard depth-damage curves inherently have a large

degree of uncertainty. Indeed, Merz et al. (2004) note that distribution of building use within the ooded area can only account for a
small portion of the variance in the observed loss data. It is clear
that losses from ooding depend on additional factors such as ood
wave velocity, duration of inundation and ood warning mechanisms. Pender and Nelz (2010) note that simplied 2D models
were not initially designed to deliver velocity estimates and do

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T.J. Fewtrell et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 36 (2011) 281291

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

Fig. 7. Detailed view of road junction in the four different resolution DEMs (ad) with the OS MasterMap road network vector layer overplotted and an indicative
cross-section of the road and curbs in panel (e). Note the generalization of the road network in coarse resolution DEMs.

not produce consistent estimates of velocities when compared to

models based on the full 2D de St. Venant equations, in particular
portraying signicant oscillatory behaviour. However, the simplied models used in this study include stringent stability conditions
such that the build up oscillations is countered directly. Therefore,
an analysis of the ability of the different stable numerical

approximations and models of varying scale to predict velocity,

in addition to ood depth, is required. Fig. 8a and b shows the evolution of the velocity throughout the simulation at each resolution
for the diffusive and inertial approximations, respectively. Velocity
is calculated as the square root of the sum of the maximum velocities in the x- and y-directions squared and thus purely represents

T.J. Fewtrell et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 36 (2011) 281291

289

Fig. 8. (Top 2 rows) Simulated velocity over time at the four control points at the four grid resolutions where the top row is the diffusive approximation and the second row is
the inertial approximation. The third row plots the velocity from the inertial approximation minus the diffusive approximation. Note the difference in scale on panel (c) of
row 3 compared to the other panels of row 3.

the maximum scalar velocity. Immediately noticeable is the similarity in predicted velocities between the diffusive and inertial formulations across all model resolutions. Indeed, with the exception
of points 2 and 4 at 2 m resolution, the difference in velocity between the two approximations is less than 10% of the predicted
velocity although this is not altogether unsurprisingly given the
similarity in simulated water elevations. The difference in velocity
is most apparent during the wetting phase where the diffusive
wave approximation predicts lower velocities which are commensurate with the deeper water depths at the wetting front highlighted in Fig. 3. At point 1, there is also a clear scale dependence
of velocity calculations whereby the 1, 2 and 5 m signicantly
over-estimate velocities compared to the 50 cm model in both
the diffusive and inertial codes. Considering the shape and scale
dependence of the road cross-sections (see for example Fig. 7e),
the ow area around point 1 is considerably constrained in coarse
resolution models causing a higher velocity through the road section. However, the opposite occurs at point 3 where the 1, 2 and
5 m models progressively under-estimate the velocity. The aggregation of topography to these coarser resolutions creates a smoother DEM surface in this region (Fig. 7e) which reduces the inuence
of the road camber in constraining water ow. This creates a greater ow area which reduces the velocity and increases water depths
at coarse scales. Therefore, there is clearly a spatially varying inuence of model resolution that will be site and DEM specic and unknown a priori. Although the 1 and 2 m resolution models appear

to provide robust estimates of water elevation, risk estimates considering some function of velocity and depth may be inconsistent
at such scales; a result also noted in a study of a larger suite of
numerical models (Pender and Nelz, 2010).
The evidence base developed in this study, allied with experience from other similar modelling work (e.g. Yu and Lane, 2006a;
Schubert et al., 2008; Hunter et al., 2008; Pender and Nelz,
2010), suggests that although there are localized differences and
scale dependencies, simplied numerical models provide a viable
alternative to solutions of the 2D de St. Venant equations in terms
of simulating ood depths and velocities. Therefore, in terms of
practical use, the key aspect lies in computational speed to deliver
simulation results in a timely fashion for industrial applications.
Fig. 9a shows the evolution of stable model time step throughout
the simulation and Fig. 9b shows the computation time required
for this test case for each model resolution. As noted in Bates
et al. (2010), the stable time step in the diffusive formulation is
several orders of magnitude smaller than at the same point in
the simulation in the inertial formulation. This translates into a
three orders of magnitude increase in computation time at the
highest resolution and a 10 increase in computation time even
at the 5 m scale. Indeed, the 50 cm inertial model completes in
9 min on eight processors compared to the 8400 min required
for the 50 cm diffusive model using the OpenMP version of the
code (Neal et al., 2009). At this site, the 1 m inertial model completes in 1.5 min compared to the 1 min for the 5 m diffusive

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T.J. Fewtrell et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 36 (2011) 281291

(a)

(b)

Fig. 9. Panel (a) shows the variation in stable time step (Dt) over time for the diffusive approximation (solid line) and the inertial approximation (dotted line). Panel (b) plots
the computation time for the various resolution models for the diffusive and inertial approximations. Note the log y-axis on both panels.

model indicating that the inertial formulation provides manageable runtimes at the scales required for detailed ood risk assessment which the diffusive formulation does not.

5. Conclusions
This paper presents a benchmarking and sensitivity analysis of a
two simplied formulations of the de St. Venant equations in the
LISFLOOD-FP hydraulic model on high resolution terrestrial LiDAR
data applied to a surface water ood event in Alcester, UK. To the
authors knowledge, this represents the rst attempts at conducting hydraulic modelling using sub-metre scale elevation data derived from terrestrial LiDAR systems collected at the 410 cm
scale. The diffusive and inertial forms of the de St. Venant equations deliver similar estimates of ood elevations throughout the
simulation, regardless of model resolution, such that the differences in water elevation are less than the errors associated with
the terrestrial LiDAR data. Furthermore, these differences in water
elevation are similar in relative magnitude to those found in previous analysis of diffusive and inertial approximations (Bates et al.,
2010) and signicantly smaller than those found when comparing
diffusive and dynamic hydraulic models (Hunter et al., 2008).
Evaluating the scale dependence of the two LISFLOOD-FP formulations point to a step change in model performance at between
2 and 5 m grid resolution which is conrmed as a consequence of
the degradation of the road network and camber representation in
coarse grids. This result is consistent with results from previous
studies which suggest three computational cells are required
across a street in order to provide accurate simulation results in
a timely fashion (Gallegos et al., 2009). As highlighted in Bates
et al. (2010), the computational cost of high resolution model simulations is considerably reduced in the inertial formulation compared to the diffusive approximation making possible the use of
terrestrial LiDAR data in practical applications. A comparison of
velocity simulations in this study shows that the difference between the diffusive and inertial approximations is generally less
than 10% of the predicted velocity but that this difference is most

notable at the wetting front. Furthermore, there is a considerable

scale dependence of velocity estimates such that risk estimates
that are a function of depth and velocity may be inconsistent
across model scales (Pender and Nelz, 2010).
Future work should concentrate on further evaluating the utility of terrestrial LiDAR data for hydraulic modelling of surface
water ooding in conjunction with traditional topographical data
sets (e.g. airborne LiDAR data). Indeed, this study has highlighted
the scope for fusing airborne and terrestrial LiDAR data to extend
coverage outside areas directly accessible by vehicles. In addition,
the applicability of simplied 2D models on such high resolution
data for small-scale ood events needs to be evaluated further,
especially with respect to results from full de St. Venant equation-based numerical models. Floods in urban areas are often characterised by the interaction of the surface and sub-surface drainage
networks and it is clear that terrestrial LiDAR data can be used to
drive forward modelling efforts coupling surface and sub-surface
ows.
Acknowledgements
Timothy Fewtrell was funded by Willis Re as part of the Willis
Research Network (WRN). The work conducted for this project by
Christopher Sampson formed part of his Masters thesis at the University of Bristol. The authors would like to thank Paul Smith and
James Whitcombe of the Environment Agency Geomatics Group
for helping the authors understand LiDAR surveying with LYNX
in practice.
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