Verisk Inland Flood Model for the UK and the Republic of Ireland

Enhancements to the Verisk Inland Flood Model for the UK and the Republic of Ireland, formerly known as the Verisk Inland Flood Model for Great Britain

Scope

Expanded model domain to include Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland; updated vintage of data to create a state-of-the-art flood model.

General model updates

Model domain

Expanded to include the following:
  • Northern Ireland
  • Republic of Ireland
Model resolution
  • Increased to 5 m
Hazard
  • Updated precipitation and river streamflow data sets
  • Updated/new digital terrain model (DTM)
  • Updated precipitation modeling approach using a coupled GCM and NWP model that is temporally and spatially downscaled
  • Flood velocity, debris flow, and event duration are explicitly modeled by event and location
  • Off-floodplain inundation depth calculated using two physically-based approaches, based on location and catchment size (previous version used a statistical approach/regression analysis techniques)
  • Intensity parameter of inundation depth is used for both on- and off-floodplain flooding
  • Off-floodplain urban drainage capacity accounted for using drainage facility design guideline data
Vulnerability
  • All flood damage functions (buildings and contents) use a component-based approach that assesses damage at a granular level, rather than for a building as a whole.
  • New demand surge framework for European models
Catalogs and event sets
  • Stochastic catalog(s)
    • Updated 10,000-year catalog that represents the near-present climate
    • All event IDs are new.
  • Historical event set
    • 10 new events
      • 2000 UK Autumn Flood
      • 2008 Ireland Summer Flood
      • 2009 Ireland November Flood
      • 2011 Ireland October Flood
      • 2012 UK Summer Flood
      • 2014 UK Winter Flood
      • 2015 UK Winter Flood – Storm Desmond
      • 2015 UK Winter Flood - Storms Eva-Frank
      • 2020 UK Winter Flood
      • 2021 UK Summer Flood

Notes

The Verisk Inland Flood Model for Great Britain is now the Verisk Inland Flood Model for the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

Touchstone-specific updates

  • New support for specialized risk types
    • Builder's risk
    • Infrastructure
    • Large industrial facilities
    • Marine
  • Support for additional construction and occupancy codes
    • Construction: Updated to 137 classes total (including 20 marine asset classes)
    • Occupancy: Updated to 130 classes total (including 64 large industrial facility and 12 marine storage classes)
  • Support for 10 new secondary risk characteristics
    • Backwater valve protection
    • Base flood elevation
    • Basement finish type
    • Basement level count
    • Content vulnerability
    • Custom elevation
    • Custom flood standard of protection
    • First floor height
    • Service equipment protection
    • Wet floodproofing
  • Supported geographic resolutions expanded to include user-specified latitude/longitude
  • Geographic variability of exposure distribution for buildings with unknown characteristics and combinations is captured by accounting for local building attributes.
  • Support for flood hazard maps/geospatial layers (20-, 50-, 100-, 200-, 250-, and 500-year return periods)

Touchstone Re-specific updates

  • Lines of business expanded to include
    • Automobile
    • Agriculture
  • Supported geographic resolutions updated to include
    • United Kingdom - Postal area (2-digit)
    • Republic of Ireland - CRESTA