Exploring the link between flash floods, geomorphology, and rainfall in the Colombian Andes

The Andean mountains in Colombia (my home country) are highly susceptible to flash floods. In Antioquia (Colombia) Flash floods have taken a toll of about 300 lives, affecting more than 13,000 families in the last 20 years. Despite their impact, we still don’t understand where and when they can happen, and we only acknowledge that intense rainfall events detonate them. Besides that, we have little information regarding the features of the watersheds that can exhibit these events. In this work, Laura used watershed oriented computational tools along with radar rainfall analysis to explore the connection between watershed features and intense events. According to her results, we can identify flash flood-prone watersheds using geomorphological and rainfall parameters with expected errors of around 10%.

This work is the result of the Master thesis developed by Laura Rodriguez and directed by myself along with Professor Luis Fernando Carvajal from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. You can also find a note about this work made by the Facultad de Minas.