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Abstract

In recent years, urban areas have been increasingly affected by more frequent and severe pluvial floods, attributed to climate change and urbanization. This trend is expected to continue in the future, underscoring the critical importance of flood warning and disaster management. However, pluvial flood forecasts on a communal level do not exist in practice, mainly due to the high computational runtimes of high-resolution flood simulation models. Here, we showcase the capability of the hydrodynamic model RIM2D (Rapid Inundation Model 2D) to deliver highly detailed and localized insights into expected flood extent and impacts in very short computational processing times, enabling operational flood warnings. We demonstrate these capabilities using the case of the June 2023 torrential rain and resulting flood event in the city of Braunschweig, located in Lower Saxony, Germany. During this event, the city experienced intense rainfall of 60 L m−2 within a short time frame, resulting in widespread inundation, significant disruption to the residents' daily life, and substantial economic costs to the city. This study serves as a clear indication that different dimensions of flood consequences can be simulated at very high resolutions in extremely short computational times and that models such as RIM2D, along with the necessary hardware for their operation, have reached a level of maturity suitable for integration into operational early warning systems and impact-based forecasting systems for such floods.