Jiaqi Zhang

ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0003-1071-6742

Graduation Semester and Year

2020

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Zheng Fang

Abstract

Flooding is the most frequent weather hazard that can cause serious fatalities and property damages worldwide. Climate change with extreme weather has further increased the impact from flooding and brought unprecedented challenges to engineering infrastructure and design. Scientists and engineers have used models to investigate and forecast the hydrologic and hydraulic responses to environmental changes in meteorological forcing and land use. With recent advances in sensing and computing technologies, models have been reaching higher levels of spatiotemporal granularity and scale. However, gaps exist between the scientific exploration and engineering practices. This doctoral study has been conducted to bridge such gaps via investigating 1) inundation mapping approaches and 2) infiltration loss models in various modeling frameworks. The obtained insights are firstly beneficial to modelers/engineers who can strategically choose the optimal modeling scheme based on the needs and resources. For scientists studying hydrology and hydrology-atmosphere feedbacks, understanding how different factors synergize or counteract with each other to affect hydrologic processes is rewarding. For the community and emergency responders, increasingly detailed and realistic representations of physical processes mark a shift in the paradigm of operational flood forecast from a past that heavily relies on human judgment/adjustment towards a computationally expensive but more robust future.

Keywords

Flooding, Hydrologic modeling, Inundation modeling, Infiltration, Loss

Disciplines

Civil and Environmental Engineering | Civil Engineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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