Flood Forecasting System of Urban Areas in South Korea

The needs of safety and the security of the homeland from unexpected natural disasters have been growing among people recently. Flood damages have been recorded every year and those damages are greater than the annual average of 2 billion US dollars since 2000 in South Korea. Due to the rapid growth of urbanization and climate change, the frequency of concentrated heavy rainfall has increased causing urban flood that results in casualties and property damage. Despite the emerging importance of a flooding situation, the studies related to the development of an integrated management system for reducing floods are insufficient in South Korea. In addition, it is difficult to reduce floods effectively without developing integrated operation system taking into account of sewage pipe network configuration with the river level. Since the floods result in increasing damages to infrastructure, as well as life and property, structural and non-structural measures should be urgently established in order to reduce the flood effectively. Therefore, in this study, we developed an integrated flood analysis system that systematized technology to quantify flood risk and flood forecasting in urban areas. The purpose of this study is to introduce integrated Landside-River Combined System by reducing the risk of floods in urban areas using radar and satellite information. Therefore, we developed the flood forecasting system so people can have enough time to evacuate in case of emergency.