Application of 1D and 2D hydrodynamic modeling to study glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) and its impact on a hydropower station in Central Himalaya

The existence of numerous lakes in the higher reaches of the Himalaya makes it a potential natural hazard as it imposes a risk of glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF), which can cause great loss of life and infrastructure in the downstream regions. Hydrodynamic modeling of a natural earth-dam failure and hydraulic routing of the breach hydrograph allow us to characterize the flow behavior of a potential flood along a given flow channel. In the present study, the flow hydraulics of a potential GLOF generated due to the moraine failure of the Satopanth lake located in the Alaknanda basin is analyzed using one-dimensional and two-dimensional hydrodynamic computations. Field measurements and mapping were carried out at the lake site and along the valley using high-resolution DGPS points. The parameters of Manning’s roughness coefficient and terrain elevation were derived using satellite-based raster, the accuracy of which is verified using field data. The volume of the lake is calculated using area-based scaling method. Unsteady flood routing of the dam-break outflow hydrograph is performed along the flow channel to compute hydraulic parameters of peak discharge, water depth, flow velocity, inundation and stream power at a hydropower dam site located 28 km downstream of the lake. Assuming the potential GLOF event occurs contemporaneously with a 100-year return period flood, unsteady hydraulic routing of the combined flood discharge is performed to evaluate its impact on the hydropower dam. The potential GLOF resulted in a peak discharge of ~ 2600 m3s−1 at the dam site which arrived 38 min after the initiation of the moraine-failure event. The temporal characteristics of the flood wave analyzed using 2D unsteady simulations revealed maximum inundation depth and flow velocity of 7.12 m and 7.6 ms−1, respectively, at the dam site. Assuming that the control gates of the dam remain closed, water depth increases at a rate of 4.5 m per minute and overflows the dam approximately 4 min after the flood wave arrival.