The Theoretical Ecohydrology Group invite to a guest talk by Prof. Kenichiro Kobayashi (Research Center for Urban Safety and Security, Kobe University, Japan) on
Challenges for simulating floodings focusing on Japanese rivers
Friday, August 18th, 2023, 15:00–16:00, Geoecology Building, Room LK19c2.
The presentation introduces the development of a shallow water equation (SWE) model to simulate the floodings from the local detailed scale to the catchment scale. The local detailed SWE model simulates the flooding with 1-5m resolution. A case study of Kumagawa River Flooding on July 2020 was shown in the presentation which caused catastrophic disasters in the region. In the Kumagawa river flooding, the ensemble rainfall simulations were carried out by a group of meteorologist, thus the results of ensemble flood simulations with the ensemble rainfalls will be shown.
On the other hand, the SWE model was expanded to the catchment scale. Then, what we call, a distributed rainfall-runoff/flood-inundation (DRR/FI) model was developed. DRR/FI can simulate the flood inundation depth, river discharge and water level seamlessly for the entire catchment. Combining the catchment scale simulation with the local detailed simulation, the flow around Kasumi dike, a nature based solution in Yodogawa River catchment (8240 km2) was simulated. The research of Kasumi dike will be briefly introduced.
About the speaker
Kenichiro Kobayashi is Associate Professor of Flood Hydrology at Kobe University in Japan.
His research focuses on the numerical simulation of natural hazards, specifically flood events, at the catchment scale. His simulations exploit parallel computing methods and run on state of the art high-performance clusters such as the K supercomputer in Kobe, Japan.
Kenichiro Kobayashi got his PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in Hydrology from the Universität Stuttgart, Germany. Prior to his current appointment, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Kyoto University in Japan.