County-Level Flash Flood Warning Framework Coupled with Disaster-Causing Mechanism

Climate change has intensified the risk of extreme precipitation, while mountainous areas are constrained by complex disaster mechanisms and difficulties in data acquisition, making it challenging for existing critical rainfall threshold accuracy to meet practical needs. Therefore, this study focuses on Yunnan Province as the research area. Based on historical flash flood events, and combining remote sensing data and measured data, 12 causative factors are selected from four aspects: terrain and landforms, land use, meteorology and hydrology, and population and economy. A combined qualitative and quantitative method is employed to analyze the relationship between flash floods and triggering factors, and to calibrate the parameters of the RTI (Rainfall Threshold Index) model. Meanwhile, machine learning is introduced to quantify the contribution of different causative factors and identify key causative factors of flash floods. Based on this, a parameter η coupling the causative mechanism is proposed to optimize the RTI method, and develop a framework for calculating county-level critical rainfall thresholds. The results show that: (1) Extreme rainfall, elevation, slope, and other factors are direct triggers of flash floods, and the high-risk areas for flash floods are mainly concentrated in the northeast and southeast of Yunnan Province. (2) The intraday rainfall has the highest correlation with the accumulated rainfall of the previous ten days; the critical cumulative rainfall ranges from 50 mm to 400 mm. (3) The county-level critical rainfall threshold for Yunnan Province is relatively accurate. These findings will provide theoretical references for improving flash flood early warning methods.