Valentin Heimhuber (M.Sc.) was honered with the Heinz-Peter Scholz award for his outstanding master's thesis with the topic „GIS Based Flood Modeling as Part of an Integrated Development Strategy for Informal Settlements, which was supervised by the chair of hydrology and river basin management and the chair of urban water systems engineering.
His thesis deals with the identification of floodplains in the refugee camps Onaville (Haiti) on the basis of hydrological and hydrodynamic-numerical simulations. The risk of dangerous flash floods which are generated in five mountainous watersheds is extremely high in this region. The main objective of this study was to create a flood hazard zoning for Onaville. Based on this a concept of flood protection measures was generated and recommendations for an effective flood risk management were given and presented to local institutions. The reactions were very grateful and positive. For this reason two additional master thesis topics were extracted that deal with further modelling and detailed planning of the applicable flood protection concept for this region.
The thesis can be downloaded with the following link: