Projects

Goal of the Project

The overall goal of the project is to develop an improved operational pluvial early flood warning system for the Geul catchment. This improved system will increase the anticipation time of pluvial floods. In addition, it can contribute to water and crisis management as well as to reduce the damages. The insights, data and software resulting from this work package will contribute to the Dashboard for early flood warning & dike monitoring, that will be developed in the overall program.

Scientific Motivation

Operational flood management is key during extreme events. An example of such an extreme flood is the one in July 2021, where several Mese tributaries in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands flooded.  However, these type of floods, often caused by convective rainfall events, are challenging to water managers and crisis management authorities. These floods are difficult to forecast due to the inherent uncertainties in forecasting the exact location and timing of heavy rainfall. The uncertainties in rainfall forecasts are propagated in the hydrological forecasts. Especially small fast responding catchments require accurate predictions with a higher spatial and temporal resolution. For these type of catchments, the lag time between the occurrence of heavy rainfall systems and the resulting peak discharge is short, resulting in limited anticipation time. For that reason, an improved early flood warning system is required, which results in reduced uncertainties in the forecasts

Case Study

The main focus of this workpackage is to develop an improved pluvial early warning system for the Geul. The Geul is a relatively small catchment that responds fast for Dutch standards. It is a rain-fed river, for that reason, accurate precipitation observations are key.

Expected Outcomes

• Blended short-term weather forecasts model, that makes use of the near real-time available weather radar product, opportunistic weather sensors and numerical weather prediction model output from HARMONIE.
• Dataset and model that can help with the development of the dashboard for early flood warning.