Predicting flood plain inundation for natural channels having no upstream gauged stations

Flow hydrographs are one of the most important key elements for flood modelling. They are recorded as time series; however, they are not available in most developing countries due to lack of gauged stations. This study presents a flood modelling method for rivers having no upstream gauged stations. The modelling procedure involves three steps: (1) predicting upstream hydrograph by the reverse flood routing method which requires information about channel geometric characteristics, downstream flow stage and downstream flow hydrographs; (2) modelling flood wave spreading using HEC-RAS. The hydrograph predicted by the reverse flood routing in the first step becomes an inflow for the HEC-RAS model; (3) delineating the flood-risk areas by overlapping the Geographical Information System (GIS)-based flood maps produced by the HEC-RAS to the related orthophoto images. The developed model is applied to Guneysu Basin in Rize Province in Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey. The model-produced flood map is compared to the observed one with success.