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Virtual City Systems

Heavy rain app for Dresden

Antje Pohl
20.09.2024

Ex­treme weath­er events, which now oc­cur reg­u­lar­ly as a re­sult of cli­mate change, pose ma­jor chal­lenges for cities and mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties. At Dres­den, the In­sti­tute of Hy­draulic En­gi­neer­ing and Tech­ni­cal Hy­dro­me­chan­ics (IWD) is de­vel­op­ing an "Ur­ban Dig­i­tal Heavy Rain Twin" for the Sax­on state cap­i­tal. In fu­ture, users will be able to use the app to sim­u­late heavy rain­fall events, ob­tain in­for­ma­tion on haz­ard sit­u­a­tions and pre­pare pro­tec­tive mea­sures on this ba­sis. The pro­to­type based on free and open soft­ware is now avail­able.

As part of the mod­el project Smart City Dres­den , re­searchers at IWD have been work­ing since May 2024 on the tech­no­log­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal cre­ation of the so-called heavy rain twin: a vir­tu­al mod­el of the city in which ge­o­graph­i­cal da­ta (the topog­ra­phy Dres­dens) and ur­ban in­for­ma­tion (such as street and build­ing types) are brought to­geth­er. Af­ter in­te­grat­ing spe­cial­ist in­for­ma­tion from hy­drol­o­gy and hy­dro­dy­nam­ics, runoff sim­u­la­tions can be car­ried out in the dig­i­tal twin

"The aim of the project is to cre­ate a pow­er­ful sys­tem that can be used both as an ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem for heavy rain­fall events and as a plan­ning tool for adapt­ing to cli­mate change," ex­plains de­vel­op­er Lars Back­haus.

he pro­to­type of­fers ful­ly au­to­mat­ed gen­er­a­tion of 2D sim­u­la­tion mod­els, which can be sup­ple­ment­ed by pre­cip­i­ta­tion fore­casts from the Ger­man Weath­er Ser­vice. 3D map mod­el of parts of Dres­denin which a flood is sim­u­lat­ed. The sim­u­la­tion re­sults pro­vide de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on wa­ter depths and flow ve­loc­i­ties in flood­ed ar­eas and can be in­ter­sect­ed with ur­ban in­fra­struc­ture el­e­ments such as roads and build­ings in or­der to pre­cise­ly an­a­lyze po­ten­tial haz­ards.

Ba­sic map and area da­ta can be vi­su­al­ized and ac­cessed via a 3D web app avail­able for desk­top and mo­bile de­vices. Users can start heavy rain sim­u­la­tions in man­u­al­ly se­lect­ed ur­ban ar­eas and track the re­sults in re­al time. The flood risk can be as­sessed for the en­tire ur­ban area down to in­di­vid­ual build­ings in or­der to ul­ti­mate­ly cal­cu­late the po­ten­tial im­pact and dam­age. This can sup­port the re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ties and pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als in mak­ing flood pre­ven­tion de­ci­sions.

Ac­cord­ing to Back­haus, a spe­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the sys­tem is that the sim­u­la­tion mod­els can be gen­er­at­ed quick­ly and eas­i­ly on the ba­sis of the mu­nic­i­pal and state-wide data­base linked in the Ur­ban Dig­i­tal Twin. Im­age of a 3D map mod­el Dres­dens. In the cen­ter of the im­age is a ver­ti­cal­ly aligned slid­er. On the left is a sim­u­lat­ed cen­tu­ry flood, on the right an ex­treme heavy rain­fall event. In this way, both clas­sic 2D hy­dro­dy­nam­ic-nu­mer­i­cal sim­u­la­tions for ur­ban ar­eas and de­rived 3D sim­u­la­tions of struc­tures such as bridges can be cre­at­ed. This al­lows the city to ob­tain pre­cise da­ta on the risk of flood­ing and thus re­act more quick­ly in the event of a dis­as­ter.

The plat­form is to be made pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2025. The com­plete de­vel­op­ment of the Ur­ban Dig­i­tal Heavy Rain Twin is planned for the end of 2026. Fur­ther de­vel­op­ment be­yond this is planned.

Back­ground

The project man­age­ment of the state cap­i­tal (Eigen­be­trieb IT-Di­en­stleis­tun­gen) is work­ing to­geth­er with the TU Dres­den in sev­er­al ar­eas in the pi­lot project Smart City Dres­den . The WIS­SENSAR­CHITEK­TUR - Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Knowl­edge Ar­chi­tec­ture is re­spon­si­ble for sci­en­tif­ic man­age­ment. A busi­ness in­for­mat­ics re­search team is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the val­ue gen­er­a­tion of the ur­ban open da­ta por­tal. The "En­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing/dig­i­tal heavy rain twin" mea­sure is be­ing de­vel­oped un­der the di­rec­tion of the en­vi­ron­men­tal of­fice of the state cap­i­tal Dres­den (Dr. Kat­ja Maerk­er) and con­tin­ues the BMU-fund­ed project WAWUR (Wild run-off wa­ter in ur­ban ar­eas).

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