Flooding

Global climate change and unprecedented weather events with increased frequency presents a threat to our cities. World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks environmental threats at the top of Global Risks for the third year in a row both in terms of impact and likelihood over the next 10 years. For the past 20 years, climate-related disasters accounted for 91% of all events, with floods topping the list at 43%.

In November 2018, US Federal Government released the fourth National Climate Assessment and it identified complex systems as a key focus where the critical interaction between climate change and its impacts are understudied. The 2019 WEF have embraced digitization as a solution to the global predicament where the interaction of multiple layers of data generate insights and predictions unlike before. The integration of layers of data, all georeferenced to a common location and visualized in a compelling 3D city environment, will provide new insights and provide a much closer approximation of complex system interactions in the real world.

This project aims to address aforementioned issues and enhance our current approach by providing a 3D Visualisation Platform. This 3D visualization platform will be built upon an existing visualization software to mo​del complex systems and capable of common 3D file formats (e.g. Revit, Sketchup, Archicad, Naviswork, Rhino, IFC, etc.). The objective is to model the interactions between flooding and transportation planning to be integrated in a visual and compelling 3D city environment.

Beside allowing different layers of data (such as topography, drainage network, building, precipitation, streets, etc) to interact and arrive at insights for city planners to visualise the risks at hand, this platform will also consider storm-surges that introduces compound flooding, that is of particular interest to assess vulnerability of coastal areas.

This new capability will also incorporate real time forecasting of flood risks by incorporating smart sensors to provide data to a sensor fusion platform, which is then fed into the model for accuracy improvement and visualisation of an operation control centre. Such will be useful for communication with communities in potential flood prone areas, allowing real-time operational decision making, and evacuation activation with flood control strategies that ultimately prevent communities from being taken by surprise.