The cost of imperfect knowledge: how epistemic uncertainties influence
flood hazard assessments
Abstract
Classical approaches to flood hazard are obtained by the concatenation
of a recurrence model for the events (i.e. an extreme river discharge)
and an inundation model that propagates the discharge into a flood
extent. The traditional approach, however, uses ‘best-fit‘ models that
do not include uncertainty from incomplete knowledge or limited data
availability. The inclusion of these, so called epistemic uncertainties,
can significantly impact flood hazard estimates and the corresponding
decision-making process. We propose a simulation approach to robustly
account for uncertainty in model’s parameters, while developing a useful
probabilistic output of flood hazard for further risk assessments. A
Peaks-Over-Threshold Bayesian analysis is performed for future events
simulation, and a pseudo-likelihood probabilistic approach for the
calibration of the inundation model is used to compute uncertain water
depths. The annual probability averaged over all possible models’
parameters is used to develop hazard maps that account for epistemic
uncertainties. Results are compared to traditional hazard maps, showing
that not including epistemic uncertainties can underestimate the hazard
and lead to non-conservative designs, and that this trend increases with
return period. Results also show that the influence of the uncertainty
in the future occurrence of discharge events is predominant over the
inundation simulator uncertainties for the case study.