PAB (Parabolic and Backwater) an unconditionally stable flood routing scheme particularly suited for real time forecasting and control

The paper describes a flood-routing scheme based upon the successive application of locally linearized parabolic equations in integral form and computation of the steady state backwater profiles (PAB). The method, which is unconditionally stable (a consequence of its integral form) is shown to be particularly suited to real-time forecasting and control. The method is generally applicable to flood routing problems in mild slope channels and rivers (apart from special cases where the inertial terms play an important role) and can also be used for routing steep front waves such as those produced by dam breaks.