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This paper presents a deep learning model based on the integration of physical and social sensors data for predictive watershed flood monitoring. The data from flood sensors and 3-1-1 reports data are mapped and fused through a multivariate time series approach. This data format is able to increase the data availability (partially due to sparsely installed physical sensors and fewer reported flood incidents in less urbanized areas) and capture both spatial and temporal interactions between different watersheds and historical events. We use Harris County, TX as the study site and obtained seven historical flood events data for training, validating, and testing the flood prediction model. The model predicts the flood probability of each watershed in the next 24 hours. By comparing the flood prediction performance of three different datasets (i.e., flood sensor only, 3-1-1 reports only, and integrated dataset), we conclude that the physical-social data integrated approach can better predict the flood with an accuracy of 0.825, area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AURC) of 0.902, area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) of 0.883, area under the F-measure curve (AUFC) of 0.762, and Max. F-measure of 0.788. 

Abstract This paper presents a Bayesian network model to assess the vulnerability of the flood control infrastructure and to simulate failure cascade based on the topological structure of flood control networks along with hydrological information gathered from sensors. Two measures are proposed to characterize the flood control network vulnerability and failure cascade: (a) node failure probability (NFP), which determines the failure likelihood of each network component under each scenario of rainfall event, and (b) failure cascade susceptibility, which captures the susceptibility of a network component to failure due to failure of other links. The proposed model was tested in both single watershed and multiple watershed scenarios in Harris County, Texas using historical data from three different flooding events, including Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The proposed model was able to identify the most vulnerable flood control network segments prone to flooding in the face of extreme rainfall. The framework and results furnish a new tool and insights to help decision‐makers to prioritize infrastructure enhancement investments and actions. The proposed Bayesian network modeling framework also enables simulation of failure cascades in flood control infrastructures, and thus could be used for scenario planning as well as near‐real‐time inundation forecasting to inform emergency response planning and operation, and hence improve the flood resilience of urban areas.