EGS XXVI General Assembly, Nice, France, March 2001

NH2.02 Meteorological and hydrological hazards: Real time flood forecasting - processes management and experiences (co-sponsored by HS)

Event Information

In the last two decades, the operational use of flood forecasting and warning systems has spread over the world; unfortunately in general this growth was based upon the initiative of local authorities which has resulted into a plethora of different approaches and systems and in the lack of a unifying vision of the problems related to real-time flood forecasting and of the appropriate operational use of the forecasts. In addition the extensive theoretical descriptions of the flood forecasting systems available in the scientific literature are rarely backed-up by the user's report on the efficiency of the systems both in terms of their practical use and in terms of the obtained results vis a vis the postulated objectives. This may indicate either that the forecasting systems are not really used or that their use does not provide successful results. Extreme floods of the last decade in a number of European river basins lead to the design of new large forecasting systems or upgrading of existing ones. New forecasting techniques have also emerged, such as the development of new types of rainfall-runoff models, their link with the meteorological limited area models' forecasts, the development of linear or non-linear phase space approaches, fuzzy techniques or the use of neural networks and/or genetic algorithms, that may result in essential improvements to the forecasts. Following these lines of thought, the scope of this session is twofold: a) The first objective is to report on the use of the existing operational flood forecasting systems in terms of their practical use and in terms of their performances meeting users' requirements. b) The second objective is to describe basic research on new technologies and emergent techniques including link to meteorological models, use of alternative measures and metrics, non-physics-based approaches together with the place and role of these techniques within the flood forecasting and warning systems. Scientists are warmly invited to present papers in collaboration with the end users in order to stimulate the discussion on the actual needs and on the possible solutions.

Preliminary List of Solicited Speakers

Co-Sponsorship