Floods and Hydrograms of Floods of Rivers in Arid Zones of the Mediterranean, Case of the Kingdom of Morocco

Abstract

The Moroccan territory is often exposed to brutal and destructive floods. The latter is triggered by intense rains and sudden duration (rain showers, thunderstorms). The human and material damage caused by these floods has always been very high. The violence of the flood (1000 m 3 /s) of Oued Ourika on Aug 17, 1995, killed 730 people. The material damage caused by torrential rain only for the years 2008 and 2009 on the road network (roads and civil engineering works) represents more than 2.9 billion dirhams. The development of flood protection studies requires the values of the instantaneous frequency flow of a certain probability and the corresponding flood hydrogram, generally, these values are not available in the watersheds studied. The objective of this study is to propose for the Moroccan territory a method of calculating flood flows and hydrographs of floods for stream and wadis ungauged for the benefit of engineers and planners for possible studies of flood protection. The proposed method is based on the delimitation of homogeneous regions of Moroccan territory (three homogeneous regions). The frequency analysis carried out for these three zones made it possible to identify the climatic parameters necessary to calculate the flood index and consequently the frequency floods. The proposed Galton type flood hydrograph includes three parameters namely the rise time, the shape parameter and the flood index. These latter parameters are easily calculated by the formulas proposed.