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Characterizing compound flooding potential and the corresponding driving mechanisms across coastal environments

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Abstract

Multiple flood-generating mechanisms can affect the communities and infrastructure systems across coastal areas. Reliable design flood estimation and risk assessment in these regions demand characterization of the interrelationships between different drivers as well as the corresponding compounding effects. In this study, we assess the compound flood risks across Canada’s coasts considering eight bivariate flooding scenarios acquired from four major drivers including precipitation, streamflow, skew surge, and total water level. For each scenario, an initial dependency test based on Kendall’s Tau is conducted. The individual variability of each driver, at different locations, is characterized through parametric extreme value distributions followed by developing the bivariate joint distributions using copula functions. Parameters of the copula functions and the marginal distributions are inferred based on the Bayesian approach. Further, compound flood risks and failure probabilities are analyzed considering the OR, AND, Kendall, and conditional hazard scenarios. Results suggest that most locations can be affected by compound flooding associated with at least two bivariate events. Among the studied scenarios, the concurrent occurrence of extreme precipitation and sea level is the most common across ~ 80% of the coastal locations. In addition, critical sites that can be affected by the majority of the bivariate events (six out of eight combinations) are identified at the Pacific, south of Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario. Besides, the estimated failure probabilities show higher hydrologic risks associated with the bivariate analysis of flood drivers compared to the univariate estimates.

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Acknowledgements

The hourly TWL records are obtained from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (https://tides.gc.ca/eng/data). Daily mean streamflow and accumulated precipitation are acquired from the water survey of Canada https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/water-overview/quantity/monitoring/survey.html, and Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data (AHCCD) (Mekis and Vincent 2011), respectively.

Funding

Funding for this project was provided by an NSERC Alliance grant in collaboration with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR).

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  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Western University, London, ON, Canada

    Farshad Jalili Pirani & Mohammad Reza Najafi

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  1. Farshad Jalili Pirani
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FJP executed all the analysis including data processing, risk calculations, presenting the result, and writing the manuscript. MRN supervised the entire research, and contributed to its conceptualization, development of frameworks, interpretation of the results, and revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mohammad Reza Najafi.

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Jalili Pirani, F., Najafi, M.R. Characterizing compound flooding potential and the corresponding driving mechanisms across coastal environments. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 37, 1943–1961 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-022-02374-0

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