TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bronstert, Axel
A1  - Agarwal, Ankit
A1  - Boessenkool, Berry
A1  - Crisologo, Irene
A1  - Fischer, Madlen
A1  - Heistermann, Maik
A1  - Koehn-Reich, Lisei
A1  - Andres Lopez-Tarazon, Jose
A1  - Moran, Thomas
A1  - Ozturk, Ugur
A1  - Reinhardt-Imjela, Christian
A1  - Wendi, Dadiyorto
T1  - Forensic hydro-meteorological analysis of an extreme flash flood
BT  - the 2016-05-29 event in Braunsbach, SW Germany
JF  - The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man
N2  - The flash-flood in Braunsbach in the north-eastern part of Baden-Wuerttemberg/Germany was a particularly strong and concise event which took place during the floods in southern Germany at the end of May/early June 2016. This article presents a detailed analysis of the hydro-meteorological forcing and the hydrological consequences of this event. A specific approach, the "forensic hydrological analysis" was followed in order to include and combine retrospectively a variety of data from different disciplines. Such an approach investigates the origins, mechanisms and course of such natural events if possible in a "near real time" mode, in order to follow the most recent traces of the event. The results show that it was a very rare rainfall event with extreme intensities which, in combination with catchment properties, led to extreme runoff plus severe geomorphological hazards, i.e. great debris flows, which together resulted in immense damage in this small rural town Braunsbach. It was definitely a record-breaking event and greatly exceeded existing design guidelines for extreme flood discharge for this region, i.e. by a factor of about 10. Being such a rare or even unique event, it is not reliably feasible to put it into a crisp probabilistic context. However, one can conclude that a return period clearly above 100 years can be assigned for all event components: rainfall, peak discharge and sediment transport. Due to the complex and interacting processes, no single flood cause or reason for the very high damage can be identified, since only the interplay and the cascading characteristics of those led to such an event. The roles of different human activities on the origin and/or intensification of such an extreme event are finally discussed. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
KW  - Flash flood analysis
KW  - Forensic disaster analysis
KW  - Radar rainfall data
KW  - Extreme discharge data
KW  - Extreme event
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.02.241
SN  - 0048-9697
SN  - 1879-1026
VL  - 630
SP  - 977
EP  - 991
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -