Flood modeling using HEC-RAS 2D and IBER 2D: a comparative study

Abstract

Floods have become a major risk in urban areas. Identifying areas at risk of flooding has become crucial to reducing this risk and protecting lives and property. Various softwares are used to identify areas at risk of flooding. In this work, a comparative study was made between two well-known software in flood modeling, HEC-RAS 2D and IBER 2D. The comparison included water depth, flow velocity, and the extent of the flood risk areas of El Bayadh City in Algeria for the return periods 50, 100, and 1,000 years. Despite the existence of some differences in the results of the water depths and the flow velocities compared, the results showed a good agreement between the two software. The HEC-RAS software gave higher values than the IBER software for three return periods in estimating water depth, and the IBER provided higher values than HEC-RAS in flood velocity estimation. The results of the flooded areas are almost identical, and the relative deviation of the compared areas varies between 1 and 3%. A flood risk map was produced to identify areas most vulnerable to flooding. This map can be used to help mitigate the risk of flooding.