京都大学防災研究所年報 第 56 号 B 平成 25 年 6 月
Annuals of Disas. Prev. Res. Inst., Kyoto Univ., No. 56 B, 2013

Reconstruction Assessment of the Paleo-inundation Condition in the Nile River Basin
Part I: Basic Process
Pingping LUO, Kaoru TAKARA, Bin HE, Weili DUAN(1), Daniel Nover (2), Han XUE(1)and Maochuan HU(1)(1) Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University(2) AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Global Change
Research Program, Washington D.C., WA, USASynopsis
Paleo-inundation condition assessment is the study of the historical inundation underthe past flood events which occurred prior to direct measurement of hydrologic
parameters using modern methods. The ultimate objectives of this study are to estimate
paleo-inundation under the extreme floods using historical literature and incomplete
data records. This paper focuses on showing an application example for estimating thehistorical inundation conditions under the paleo-floods using modern technologies at theriver basin scale.
Keywords: Paleo-inundation, Nile River basin, Flo-2D, flood risk management

1.

Introduction

Inundation simulation is very import for floodrisk management to reduce the damage andeconomic loss and provide escape information offlood disaster. Paleo-inundation study which is apart of paleo-flood hydrology study is to calculate
the inundation conditions under the historicalevents by using the historical information andmodern methods. Paleo-inundation analysis play animportant role on reconstructing the flooding anddamage conditions, evaluating the historical flood
control policy, providing the experiences ofhistorical flood risk management and escapetechnology.
Paleo-flood hydrology is the study of past flood
events which occurred prior to direct measurementofhydrologic
parameters
using
modernmethods(Baker et al., 1987). Although there issome ambiguity between the terms ‘paleo-floods’

and ‘historical floods’, we use the terms here torefer to any past flood that must be recreated due toa lack of direct measurements (Baker et al., 1987).
The most popular technique of paleo-floodhydrology is the analysis of slack water deposits
and paleo-stage indicators (SWD-PSI). Research inthis area has focused on: (1) geochronology, (2)hydraulic modeling, (3) flood-frequency analysis,and (4) climate impacts (Baker et al., 2002).
Paleo-hydrology is increasingly studied world-wide.
In recent studies, a three-dimensional coupledclimate model consisting of three components
describing the atmosphere, ocean and vegetation(ECBilt-CLIOVECODE) (Brovkin et al., 2002;
Goosse and Fichefet, 1999; Opsteegh et al., 1998)
was developed and used to model the paleo-climate.
The hydrologic model STREAM (Aerts et al., 1999)
has been used to simulate paleo-discharge (Ward etal., 2007, 2008 and 2011) using paleoclimate datafrom ECBilt-CLIOVECODE.

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2.

GeneralNile river is the one of the longest river in theworld with 6740km from the source to the sea. TheNile river basin is extends from 4ºS to 32ºN andcovering an area of 3 million km2.It is including
two main branches (Blue Nile and White Nile), amain Nile and lakes( Victoria, Albert, Kayoga,Edward).The climate in the upstream of Nile river
basin is tropical, and the climate in the downstreamof Nile river basin is arid and semi-arid. The meanannual rainfall in the upstream is 1200 mm, but thatin the downstream is less than 10 mm. In this study,
we will focus on the main Nile river basin in theEgypt. The detail location is shown in the Figure 1.

Figure 1 Location of study area with the blue
square in the left DEM map.
3. Methods
3.1 Process of scenario paleo-hydrology study
Paleo-floods (Non-systematic
uncertain records or facts)

SystematicallyRecorded Floods

Future Possible
FloodsFlood discharge

The hydrology and paleo-hydrology studies inNile river basin have been studied in many previous
researches. The Nile river recorded flood level in
Roda island have been studied to find the multiscaledetection of abrupt climate change by using
Mann-Kendall rank test (Fraedrich et al.,1997;Jiang et al., 2002). Oscillatory modes havebeen used to extend the Nile river records from 622
A.D. to 1922 A.D.(Kondrashov et al., 2005). The
deep Mediterranean sediments have been observed
to find the Nile flood records and provide a direct
link between the deep-marine sedimentary records
and climate change(Ducassou et al., 2008). The
relationships between the paleo-climate variability
and paleo-flood have been presented (Hassan,2007;Eltahir, 1996). There are many researches inthe Nile river basin focus on the sediments isotope
to find the paleo-flood records and paleo-climateconditions(Beuning et al., 2002;Ducassou et al.,2009), climate change impacts on hydrology(Elshamy et al., 2009), Sediment transport(Billi andel Badri Ali, 2010;Khalifa, 2012;Ya, 2011), andHydrological modeling(Setegn et al., 2008;Chebudand Melesse, 2009;Petersen and Fohrer, 2010). It is
important to simulate the paleo-inundation
conditions for the paleo-hydrology study in the Nileriver basin.
In this study, the main objectives are to build
the basic process for the paleo-inundation
reconstruction analysis, to provide a case study forthe paleo-inundation reconstruction assessment, andgive a discussion on the basic process.

≪≪≪≪PresentUn-gauged Period

Modern Gauged Period

TimeFutureFigure 2 Paleo-floods, systematically recorded
floods and future possible floods (Luo et al., 2013)
In this section, it is descripted the basic processof paleo-hydrology reconstruction. Figure 2 show
the time series of the hydrological studies. The
main target of this study is to reconstruct thepaleo-inundation condition in the past period. The
detail framework of this study is presented inFigure 3. The process of this study is described asfollow:(1)We collected the observed data in present period
such as digitlized inundation maps, systematical
recorded discharge, rainfall and water depth, andDEM, land use, soil type, river channel. The present
observed data can be get from the online database,books and websites.
(2)The historical recorded data of rainfall,discharge, water level, environment conditions andso on will be collected from the old maps, books,
pictures and drawers in the paleo-period. The
paleo-period is the past period which is lack of thesystematical recorded data (Figure2).

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period and paleo-period.
(5)The paleo-inundation condition is reconstructedby using the historical scenario condition from step
3, the simulated data and calibrated models fromstep 4.

(3)Based on the collected data in present period andpaleo-period, we will construct the historicalscenario condition for paleo-inundation simulation.
(4)The climate model, hydrological model, andenvironment construction model will be calibrated
and validated by using the collected data in present

Paleo-period

Present-period

Future-periodReconstruction

Old Maps • Books
Pictures • Drawers

Observation
Database, Books,Websites
Digitalized Inundation
Maps

Model

Systematical recorded
Discharge and Water
depth

Scenario
information

Systematical recorded
Rainfall

DEM, Land use, soil
type, river channel

Methods

CDRMV3

Flo-2D

Lisflood-fp

Climate model

PLUR

PDF,ADA

Scenario Discharge

Historical Inundation
Maps

Historical Water depth

Paleo-Rainfall

Paleo-Discharge

Paleo-Environment

Provide a high dependable
evidence for predict thefuture flood disaster.

Support the information for thesustainable society under theclimate change and extreme events

Figure 3 Process of paleo-hydrology study
3.2 Flo-2D modelFLO-2D is a two-dimensional finite difference
model that simulates clear-water flood hazards,mudflows, and debris flows on alluvial fans andurban floodplains. Interactive flood or mudflow
routing between channel, street, and floodplain flow
is performed using a uniform grid system todescribe complex floodplain topography.
In this study, we used the Flo-2D software toreconstruct the paleo-inundation condition. The
detail steps are described as follow:(1)We use the data from step 1 of section 3.1 toprocess the DEM, land use and river boundary in
ArcGIS, and converse the raster file to ASCII file.
(2)The transferred ASCII files from step 1 are usedas the input in GDS of Flo-2D software.
(3)In the GDS, we need to create the grid by using

the grid size 100m, define the simulation boundary
using polyline shape file, and interpolate theelevation points.
(4)The paleo-informations such as paleo-land use,paleo-dykes and paleo-channel will input in thesimulation area which is defined in step 3.
(5)We will define the input flow point and output
elements for calibration.
(6)The inundation condition will be presented in
Mapper of Flo-2D software.
4.

Results and Discussion

The case study results are presented in thissection. We chose two case studies, the first one is
the inundation condition over bank flow, and thesecond one is the inundation in the floodplain under
the historical basin scale flood prevention method.

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35000

Input Discharge

30000
25000

Discharge

For the first case study, we used the historicaldischarge without Aswan dam to reconstruct thescenario discharge (Figure 4).
In Figure 5, we found the highest water level islocated inside the river channel close to the input
point, and it overflow to the floodplain. The mostwater lever of the inundation condition in the flood
plain is less than 2.5 meter, but there are two areas
have the high water level in the flood plain which isthe area close to the input point, and the area in themiddle of river channel with green color.
For the second case study, we simulated thebasin scale method for flood prevention based on
the historical information. The input scenariodischarge is presented in Figure 6. In this case study,
we make the boundary dykes with 150 meterelevation, No.1 dykes are 100 meter elevation, andNo.2 dykes are 120 meters elevation (Figure 7). The
paleo-inundation condition using the basin scale
method is shown in Figure 8. The highest waterlevel is 34.3 meter which appears in the area close
to the input point. The flood is overflowing fromDyke No.1 to Dyke No.2, and it is stopped by theDyke No.2.

20000
15000
10000
5000
012345678910 11 12 13 14 15 16TimeFigure 6 Scenario Discharge for case study 2

2

The boundary dyke is 150 meter elevation.
NO.1 dyke is 100 meter elevation. NO.2 dyke is
120 meter elevation

1

Red line is the dyke around the rive bank.
The green grid is the input flow point.

Figure 7 Structure of paleo-condition for case study
2.

Figure 4 Scenario Discharge for case study 1

Figure 8 Paleo-inundation condition using basin
scale method.

Inputpoint

Figure 5 Inundation condition of case study 1

Thispaleo-inundation
reconstructionisimportant to evaluate the past flood control policies
and get the experience from the paleo-flood events.
However this study is basically introducing theprocessofthepaleo-inundation
andpaleo-hydrology simulation. Due to the lack ofdetail historical data and information, it is― 76 ―

necessary to have a further research focus on the
paleo-inundation and paleo-hydrology with thehistorical calibration and historical input data.
5.

Conclusions

The basic process of paleo-inundation andpaleo-hydrology reconstruction in the Nile river
basin is developed in this study. A detail steps forpaleo-inundation reconstruction assessment using
Flo-2D is also described. Two case study ofpaleo-inundation condition have been study using
Flo-2D software under the histrocial scenariodischarge and basin scale method. A further studyof the paleo-inundation and paleo-hydrology
reconstruction using the historical recorded data isnecessary.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Postdoctoral
fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotionof Science (JSPS) P12055, JSPS KAKENHI Grant
Number 24∙02055, Designing Local Frameworks
for Integrated Water Resources Management at theResearch Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN),
JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(A) Grant
Number 24248041, the Kyoto University Global
COE program on “Sustainability/Survivability
Science for a Resilient Society Adaptable toExtreme Weather Conditions”, and Inter-Graduate
School Program for Sustainable Development andSurvivable Societies (GSS), MEXT Program for
Leading Graduate Schools 2011-2018. The authors
are grateful for their support. We also thank Dr.
Apip at DPRI, Kyoto University for providing us
great comments on this paper.

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― 78 ―(Received June 11, 2013)