Abstract
Bangladesh is an extremely flood-prone country due to its geographical
location at the downstream end of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna
(GBM) river basin. Flood destroys agricultural products of large areas
and causes loss of lives and damage to infrastructures. Heavy rainfall
during the monsoon season is the major cause of flooding in this region
which occurs almost every year. However, the lack of observations of
rainfall in the upper catchment areas outside Bangladesh makes flood
forecasting challenging in this region. In addition, errors in rainfall
forecasts and lack of high-resolution bathymetry and topographic data
put major constraints to flood forecasting in Bangladesh through
hydrologic and hydrodynamic models. Currently Flood Forecasting and
Warning Centre (FFWC) of Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) is
producing short-range flood forecasts with a lead time of up to three
days. However, medium-range (3 to 5 days) forecasts are crucial for
reducing flood-related losses as they provide more time for decision
making and preparation compared to short-range forecasts. In this study,
a flood forecast model based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been
developed for the Kushiyara river which is one of the major rivers of
the northeastern region of Bangladesh. Rainfall data from the fifth
generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis
(ERA5), daily Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) from the Global Land Data
Assimilation System with the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
Data Assimilation (GRACE-DA) and daily Surface Soil Moisture data from
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) have been used as input to the
model. The model shows reasonable accuracy in forecasting the water
level of the Kushiyara river at Sheola station with a lead time of up to
seven days. For 1-day lead time, the correlation coefficient (R) between
the observed and simulated water levels is 0.97. The performance of the
model is also promising for a medium-range forecast (R=0.93 for 7-day
lead time). This study indicates that the release of daily GRACE gravity
field solutions in near-real-time may enable us to forecast and monitor
high volume flood events in this region.