A Real Time Simulation and Modeling of Flood Hazard

The increasing flash flood hazards in major cities like Kuala Lumpur have caused tremendous damages to the society and this requires more essential countermeasures to be implemented. With the advancement in 3D Computer Graphics and fluid simulation technologies, movie experts can now produce realistic visual effects for fluid objects such as water. This paper describes a study made to model and simulate the flash flood incident that struck Kuala Lumpur on 10 June 2007 using 3D Computer Graphics and fluid simulation techniques. The main goal was to study and examine the stability and effectiveness of this approach as a solution tool for environmental studies. Particle-based technique called Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method were used to model the flash flood behavior. This was done using MAYA plug-in software called GLU3D which was developed based on SPH architecture. Geographical Information System (GIS) data such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and remote sensing imagery were used to model the study area. Results show an adequate realism of water movement for the area studied. A prototype of a flood system was developed using MAYA Application Programming Interface (API) to examine the real-time effectiveness of flood movement. The study has verified the usability of 3D computer graphics and fluid simulation particle based technique for environmental study purposes. The main contribution the study was to show that this approach can produce a realistic visualization thus enable more precautions and countermeasures to prevent the disaster. Key-Words: Three Dimensional (3D), Computer Graphics, Fluid Simulation, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), Application Programming Interface (API), Geographical Information System (GIS), Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), Digital Elevation Model (DEM).