A copula-based approach for assessing flood protection overtopping associated with a seasonal flood forecast in Niamey, West Africa.
Résumé
Flood is one of the most important natural disasters that cause huge loss of life and properties every
year around the world. Moreover, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies pointed out that floods were by far the greatest cause of homelessness. In West Africa,
many countries are damaged from flooding almost every season. Thus, this study aimed to set a
seasonal flood forecast model and carried out an evaluation of the level of risk associated with each
seasonal forecast. HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Centers River Analysis System) was used to
develop a hydro-dynamical model of Niger river on a 160km reach (80km upstream to
80kmdownstream of Niamey), then a simple risk measure was used to calculate the probability of
overtopping the flood protection dykes in Niamey. Results show that the hydro-dynamical model
reproduced well the rating curve over the period 2009-2014. A subsequent copula analysis
demonstrated a dependency between flow on the Niger river and flow on the Sirba River, the main
tributary contributing to the seasonal flood at Niamey. The Gumbel copula was found to be the best
among the tested 5 copulas to represent the dependency between peak flow on the main channel of
the Niger River and concomitant flow on the Sirba river. It is found that for the six dykes the
probabilities of being overtopped by the flood range from very high (100%) to relatively low (16.67
%) over the 34 years of simulation.