FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT FUNDAMENTALS
Short Course
10 – 14 May, 2010
Turkish Water Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey
PURPOSE
Floods are among the natural disasters that cause occasional property damages and life losses with great financial, environmental and social costs. The triggering mechanism of these hazardous natural events is the atmospheric conditions ending up with conventional meteorological setup for the occurrence of precipitation. Especially, extreme cases of precipitation i.e. intensive rainfall can be calculated from the water experts’ point of view via different concepts on the basis of logical, rational, probabilistic, statistical, stochastic, and chaotic approaches. Meteorological factors are necessary but not sufficient for flood evaluation and prediction purposes in an area. Not all extreme precipitation cases cause hazardous floods, but for their occurrences among further agents are hydrologic, geomorphologic, geological surface features, land use and recent climate change impacts. In plane areas, floods become harmful for agricultural lands mostly due to water accumulation and consequent inundation. Even, when there is not sufficient vegetation cover, high velocity flash floods endanger further human life and property.
Apart from the aforementioned causes, there are also social factors subjecting human settlements to flood dangers. This can be attributed to bad planning and mismanagement practices. For instance, unless urban land-use decisions are taken by considering flood risks, settlements are prone to potential flood danger. For such a task, necessary meteorological and hydrological evaluations and social planning need to be done beforehand. Consequently, projects and constructions must be critically evaluated and studied for the purpose of reducing flood damages. Unfortunately, most often these studies are not carried out for proper future planning, and consequently, flood-risk areas are designated to industrial and residential uses. Then, suddenly, floods appear with their destructive nature and causes property damages as well as cost of lives. Last but not the least, in any future planning the impacts of climate change on flood occurrence frequency and intensity must also be taken into consideration.
The main purpose of this short course is to get the participants acquainted with the basic philosophy of flood risk and flood occurrence with its period, intensity, frequency, discharge, regional flood risk map preparation especially, in arid and semi-arid regions by considering also the humid region fundamentals, which are dominant all over the world.
CAREER QUALIFICATION FOR ATTENDANCE
There are various disciplines which are interested in flood calculations for their career purposes. For instance, hydrogeologists are concerned with groundwater recharge, engineers with culvert and highway design, environmentalists with damages on ecosystems, agriculturalists with fertile land protection, hydrologists with peak flood discharge and design for protection, public administrators with citizens’ life and property protection, insurance companies with risk management, risk analysts for determination of hazard levels and preparation of risk maps.
SHORT COURSE PROGRAM
The course contents are designed to cover a four-day training program covering theoretical and applied examples with software usages. The first two days will be intensified on basic principles of flood calculations with simple but illuminating homework. During the last two days, intensified computer oriented training will be provided.
DAILY COURSE PROGRAM
Four-day training course will cover the following program:
10 May, 2010: 8:00 – 12:30 a.m.: Flood definition, ordinary flash, stream and river floods, mountainous floods, urban floods, seashore floods; Flash flood distinctions.
11 May, 2010: 8:00-12:30 a.m.: Flood factors; Meteorological records, rainfall types, intensity, duration, frequency, areal extent; Topography, area, aspect, stream channel length, single slope, harmonic slope, area-elevation curve; Rainfall-runoff relationship; Hydrograph, unit, synthetic, dimensionless; Curve number and related methods, Infinitesimal runoff method.
12 May, 2010: Flood calculation methodologies, empirical, rational, runoff coefficient; Probabilistic, risk, order, Weibull plot position; Statistical, distribution functions, Gumbel, Log-Pearson, Log-normal, frequency factor; Probable maximum flood, probable maximum rainfall.
13 May, 2010: Flood calculations, risk and design flood discharge, flood risks, cross section, map, inundation depth, rational-area method; Regional flood analysis, regional skewness coefficient, arid region flood analysis; Ensemble flood models; Applications.
14 May 2010: Practical applications by various humid, arid and semi-arid region case studies. Certificate distribution and end party.
Course materials: Whole the course material will be given to participants in the form of CD along with some written documents.
Registration conditions: At maximum 30 persons can register this short course. The priority depends on the first registered first served principle.
Laptops: All students must bring their own laptops for this course.
Course fee: $500 includes course material, a text book containing the course topics will be given to attendances before the registration.
Cancellation Policy: $50 fee until June 1, full course fee after June 1.
Registration deadline:
May 1, 2010. Register by e-mail by sending the information below to suvakfi@suvakfi.org.tr, or fax to +90 212 522 3690, or post-mark by April 30 by mailing to the following correspondence address.
Course organization:
Turkish Water Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey.
Correspondence address:
Dr. Tarkan Erdik (tarkanerdik@hotmail.com)
Water Foundation - Atatürk Bulvarý
Emlak Bankasý Blk A. Bl. No. 148/20
Aksaray
ISTANBUL
Tel : +90 212 522 35 70
Web : www.suvakfý.org.tr
e-mail : suvakfı@suvakfı.org.tr