Evaluation of Multiple Geomorphic Flood Inundation Mapping Techniques over the Eastern United States

Flooding is one of the most frequent natural disasters causing significant damage to natural and built environments. Ever increasing flood risk due to increase in urbanization and climatic change requires effective and efficient flood inundation mapping techniques to be used within global flood models.  In this study, we evaluated multiple elevation-based hydrogeomorphic inundation models over the Eastern United States using high resolution digital elevation model (10meter). The inundation models we tested include the Hight Above Drainage Methodology (HAND),  Relative Elevation model (REM), Geomorphic Flood Index (GFI) and a hybrid model between HAND and REM. We utilized the results of a hydrodynamic model as reference. Our results indicated that GFI methodology performs better compared to other methods, however requires calibration of three parameters for implementation, as opposed to one parameter for other models.