Utility of remotely operated underwater vehicle in flood inundation mapping for dam failure: A case study of Lake Tuscaloosa Dam

A remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) is a tethered underwater mobile device that can conduct a bathymetric survey cost-efficiently. Assessment of the utility of ROV-based bathymetric surveys in flood inundation mapping remains limited. This study aims to examine the utility of ROV-based bathymetric surveys in high-resolution flood inundation mapping for a hypothetical case study of the Lake Tuscaloosa Dam breach in the state of Alabama, USA. This study conducted the sensitivity test of flood inundation mapping to the river channel depth (ROV-based vs. digital elevation model [DEM]-based) and initial flow condition (e.g., wet vs. dry), via six different simulations of the parallelized diffusion hydrodynamic model (pDHM). This study found that the ROV-based pDHM runs had higher maximum water depths over the flood-inundated areas, ranging from +73% to +166% of the simulated depths of the DEM-based pDHM runs. However, the impact of initial streamflow condition on the maximum depths was limited. This study also found that the pDHM runs with a dry initial flow condition delayed the time to reach the maximum depth after the dam breach by 2 h relative to the pDHM runs with a wet initial streamflow condition. This study suggests that ROV-based bathymetry surveys improve flood inundation mapping by emphasizing the influence of river channel depth, initial streamflow conditions, and bathymetry, thereby bolstering community resilience to a potential human-made hazard such as dam failure.