Description and evaluation of a surface runoff susceptibility mapping method

Surface runoff is the hydrological process at the origin of phenomena such as soil erosion, floods out of rivers, mudflows, debris flows and can generate major damage. This paper presents a method to create maps of surface runoff susceptibility. The method, called IRIP (Indicator of Intense Pluvial Runoff, French acronym), uses a combination of landscape factors to create three maps representing the susceptibility (1) to generate, (2) to transfer, and (3) to accumulate surface runoff. The method input data are the topography, the land use and the soil type. The method aims to be simple to implement and robust for any type of study area, with no requirement for calibration or specific input format. In a second part, the paper focuses on the evaluation of the surface runoff susceptibility maps. The method is applied in the Lezarde catchment (210 km(2), northern France) and the susceptibility maps are evaluated by comparison with two risk regulatory zonings of surface runoff and soil erosion, and two databases of surface runoff impacts on roads and railways. Comparison tests are performed using a standard verification method for dichotomous forecasting along with five verification indicators: accuracy, bias, success ratio, probability of detection, and false alarm ratio. The evaluation shows that the susceptibility map of surface runoff accumulation is able to identify the concentrated surface runoff flows and that the susceptibility map of transfer is able to identify areas that are susceptible to soil erosion. Concerning the ability of the IRIP method to detect sections of the transportation network susceptible to be impacted by surface runoff, the evaluation tests show promising probabilities of detection (73-90%) but also high false alarm ratios (77-92%). However, a qualitative analysis of the local configuration of the infrastructure shows that taking into account the transportation network vulnerability can explain numerous false alarms. This paper shows that the IRIP method can be a valuable tool to facilitate field analysis and perform surface runoff zonings and opens interesting prospects for the use of the IRIP method in a context of risk management. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.