Abstract
Mexico City is facing problems of flooding in some areas at certain times of the year, causing important losses and damages on properties and residents including some casualties. Therefore, it is important to carry out a flood risk assessment in the catchment of Mexico City and estimate damages of probable flood events. However, limited data of observed discharges and water depths in the main rivers of the city are available, and this represents an obstacle for the understanding of flooding in Mexico City. The premise of this study is that with the limited data and resources available, the catchment can be represented to an acceptable degree by the construction of a deterministic hydrological model of the Mexico City basin. The objective of the developed tool is to provide an efficient support to management of the flood processes by predicting the behavior of the catchment for different rainfall events and flood scenarios. The capability of a model based on MIKE SHE modeling system for the Mexico City catchment was evaluated by comparing the observed data and the simulation results during a year after a careful development based on the most important parameters for characterizing the processes. Significant and operational results (>0.75 for Nash Sutcliffe coefficient) have been obtained on one of the major sub-catchments of the Mexico basin. These results demonstrate the interest to implement a deterministic hydrological model for assessing flood risks in a dense urban environment where data availability is limited. The developed model can be used for assessing the risks and designing some protection measures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Baró-Suárez, J., Díaz-Delgado, C., & Esteller-Alberich, M. (2007). Flood damage curves in residential and agricultural areas of Mexico. Part II: Case study in Lerma River catchment’. Ingeniería hidráulica en México, XXII(3), 71–85.
Baró-Suárez, J., Díaz-Delgado, C., Esteller-Alberich, M., & Calderón, G. (2007). Flood damage curves in residential and agricultural areas of Mexico. Part I: Methodology. Ingeniería hidráulica en México, XXII(1), 91–102.
Boyle, S., Tsanis, I., & Kanaroglou, P. (1998). Developing geographic information systems for land use impact assessment in flooding conditions. Journal of Water Resource Planning and Management, 124(2), 89–98.
Carrillo, N. (1969). The sinking of Mexico City and Proyect Texcoco. VII International Congress of Soil Mechanics, SHCP edn.
Conagua. (2012). Water Atlas of Mexico. México: Semarnat.
DHI. http://www.crwr.utexas.edu/gis/gishyd98/dhi/mikeshe/Mshemain.htm.
Dominguez, R. (2000). Floodings in Mexico city, issues and proposed solutions. Revista digital universitaria, UNAM. Vol. 1, No. 20. ISSN 1607-6079, 30 September 2000.
Dutta, D., Herath, S., & Musiake, K. (2003). A mathematical model for flood loss estimation. Journal of Hydrology, 277(1–2), 24–49.
Goovaerts, P. (2000). Geostatistical approaches for incorporating elevation into spatial interolation of rainfall. Journal of Hydrology, 228, 110–130.
Guinot, V., & Gourbesville, P. (2003). Calibration of physically based models: back to basics? Journal of Hydroinformatics, 5, 233–244.
Jonkman, S. N., Bočkarjovab, M., Kokc, M., & Bernardinid, P. (2008). Integrated hydrodynamic and economic modelling of flood damage in the Netherlands. Ecological Economics, 66, 77–90.
Lesser, J. M., & Cortes, M. A. (1998). The sinking of the terrain of Mexico City and its implications on the drainage system. Ingeniería hidráulica en México, Septemper–December, México.
Luege, J. L. (2012). Hydrological sustainability program. IV International Legal Colloquium on Water, Conagua, México.
Messner, F., Penning-Rowsell, E., Green, C., Meyer, V., Tunstall, S., & van der Veen, A. (2007). Evaluating flood damages: guidance and recommendations on principles and methods.
National academy of sciences. (1995). Mexico City's Water Supply: Improving the Outlook for Sustainability. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press.
Penning-Rowsell, E. C., & Chatterton, J. B. (1977). The benefits of flood alleviation. A manual of assessment techniques. London: Belhaven Technical Press.
Segond, M. L., Wheater, H., & Onof, C. (2007). The significance of spatial rainfall representation for flood runoff estimation. Journal of Hydrology, 347, 243–259.
Vazquez, R. F., Feyen, L., Feyen, J., & Refsgard, J. C. (2002). Effect of grid size on effective parameters and model performance of the MIKE SHE code. Hydrological Processes, 16(2), 355–372.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Surface Water department of the National Water Commission of Mexico CONAGUA and the Institute of Geography and Statistics INEGI for the data provided for this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vargas, R.B., Gourbesville, P. (2016). Deterministic Hydrological Model for Flood Risk Assessment of Mexico City. In: Gourbesville, P., Cunge, J., Caignaert, G. (eds) Advances in Hydroinformatics. Springer Water. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-615-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-615-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-287-614-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-287-615-7
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)