Flood hazard assessment in Montenegro through the application of two-dimensional hydraulic modelling

Floods, induced partly by climate change and partly by the negative impact of human actions, may be regarded as the most common type of natural catastrophe in Montenegro, causing significant economic, ecological, social, and health damage yearly. Therefore, the focal point of flood risk assessment is reflected in properly determining flood hazards. However, within the Montenegrin National flood risk assessment, which is entirely scenario-based, the hazard is treated only by estimating the occurrence probability of a specific scenario. The paper provides an overview of recent efforts to overcome the potential weaknesses of scenario-based risk assessment by constructing hazard maps for all areas of potential significant flood risk in Montenegro. Hazard maps are intended to visualise different flood intensities (e.g., flood depth, velocity, etc.) for selected return periods. Such outputs are generated by two-dimensional hydraulic modelling, which requires extensive work on gathering the available field data, calculating hydrological inputs, building and calibrating the model, and defining uncertainties that may affect the results. The final production of the hazard maps is conveyed by post-processing the computation results in GIS-based software.