Influence of rainfall and soil properties spatial aggregation on extreme flash flood response modelling: An evaluation based on the Sesia river basin, North Western Italy

High resolution radar rainfall fields and a distributed hydrologic model are used to evaluate the sensitivity of flood and flash flood simulations to spatial aggregation of rainfall and soil properties at catchment scales ranging from 75 to 983 km2. Hydrologic modeling is based on a Hortonian infiltration model and a network-based representation of hillslope and channel flow. The investigation focuses on three extreme flood and flash flood events occurred on the Sesia river basin, North Western Italy, which are analysed by using four aggregation lengths ranging from 1 to 16 km. The influence of rainfall spatial aggregation is examined by using the flow distance as a spatial coordinate, hence emphasising the role of river network in the averaging of space–time rainfall. The effects of reduced and distorted rainfall spatial variability on peak discharge have been found particularly severe for the flash flood events, with peak errors up to 35% for rainfall aggregation of 16 km and at 983 km2 catchment size. Effects are particularly remarkable when significant structured rainfall variability combines with relatively important infiltration volumes due to dry initial conditions, as this emphasises the non-linear character of the rainfall–runoff relationship. In general, these results confirm that the correct estimate of rainfall volume is not enough for the accurate reproduction of flash flood events characterised by large and structured rainfall spatial variability, even at catchment scales around 250 km2. However, accurate rainfall volume estimation may suffice for less spatially variable flood events. Increasing the soil properties aggregation length exerts similar effects on peak discharge errors as increasing the rainfall aggregation length, for the cases considered here and after rescaling to preserve the rainfall volume. Moreover, peak discharge errors are roughly proportional to runoff volume errors, which indicates that the shape of the flood wave is influenced in a limited way by modifying the detail of the soil property spatial representation. Conversely, rainfall aggregation may exert a pronounced influence on the discharge peak by reshaping the spatial organisation of the runoff volumes and without a comparable impact on the runoff volumes.