A CyberGIS Integration and Computation Framework for High-Resolution Continental-Scale Flood Inundation Mapping

We present a Digital Elevation Model-based hydrologic analysis methodology for continental flood inundation mapping (CFIM), implemented as a cyberGIS scientific workflow in which a 1/3rd arc-second (10m) height above nearest drainage (HAND) raster data for the conterminous United States (CONUS) was computed and employed for subsequent inundation mapping. A cyberGIS framework was developed to enable spatiotemporal integration and scalable computing of the entire inundation mapping process on a hybrid supercomputing architecture. The first 1/3rd arc-second CONUS HAND raster dataset was computed in 1.5days on the cyberGIS Resourcing Open Geospatial Education and Research supercomputer. The inundation mapping process developed in our exploratory study couples HAND with National Water Model forecast data to enable near real-time inundation forecasts for CONUS. The computational performance of HAND and the inundation mapping process were profiled to gain insights into the computational characteristics in high-performance parallel computing scenarios. The establishment of the CFIM computational framework has broad and significant research implications that may lead to further development and improvement of flood inundation mapping methodologies.