WorldWideScience

Sample records for flood monitoring system

  1. Real-time flood monitoring and warning system

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jirapon Sunkpho

    2011-04-01

    Full Text Available Flooding is one of the major disasters occurring in various parts of the world. The system for real-time monitoring ofwater conditions: water level; flow; and precipitation level, was developed to be employed in monitoring flood in Nakhon SiThammarat, a southern province in Thailand. The two main objectives of the developed system is to serve 1 as informationchannel for flooding between the involved authorities and experts to enhance their responsibilities and collaboration and2 as a web based information source for the public, responding to their need for information on water condition and flooding.The developed system is composed of three major components: sensor network, processing/transmission unit, and database/application server. These real-time data of water condition can be monitored remotely by utilizing wireless sensors networkthat utilizes the mobile General Packet Radio Service (GPRS communication in order to transmit measured data to theapplication server. We implemented a so-called VirtualCOM, a middleware that enables application server to communicatewith the remote sensors connected to a GPRS data unit (GDU. With VirtualCOM, a GDU behaves as if it is a cable directlyconnected the remote sensors to the application server. The application server is a web-based system implemented usingPHP and JAVA as the web application and MySQL as its relational database. Users can view real-time water conditionas well as the forecasting of the water condition directly from the web via web browser or via WAP. The developed systemhas demonstrated the applicability of today’s sensors in wirelessly monitor real-time water conditions.

  2. GSM and web-based flood monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pagatpat, J C; Arellano, A C; Gerasta, O J

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this project is to develop a local real-time river flood monitoring and warning system for the selected communities near Mandulog River. This study focuses only on the detection and early warning alert system (via website and/or cell phone text messages) that alerts local subscribers of potential flood events. Furthermore, this system is interactive wherein all non-registered subscribers could inquire the actual water level of the desired area location they want to monitor. An estimated time a particular river waterway will overflow is also included in the analyses. The hardware used in the design is split into several parts namely: the water level detector, GSM module, and microcontroller development board. (paper)

  3. Flood scour monitoring system using fiber Bragg grating sensors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Yung Bin; Lai, Jihn Sung; Chang, Kuo Chun; Li, Lu Sheng

    2006-12-01

    The exposure and subsequent undermining of pier/abutment foundations through the scouring action of a flood can result in the structural failure of a bridge. Bridge scour is one of the leading causes of bridge failure. Bridges subject to periods of flood/high flow require monitoring during those times in order to protect the traveling public. In this study, an innovative scour monitoring system using button-like fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors was developed and applied successfully in the field during the Aere typhoon period in 2004. The in situ FBG scour monitoring system has been demonstrated to be robust and reliable for real-time scour-depth measurements, and to be valid for indicating depositional depth at the Dadu Bridge. The field results show that this system can function well and survive a typhoon flood.

  4. Innovative solutions in monitoring systems in flood protection

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sekuła, Klaudia; Połeć, Marzena; Borecka, Aleksandra

    2018-02-01

    The article presents the possibilities of ISMOP - IT System of Levee Monitoring. This system is able to collecting data from the reference and experimental control and measurement network. The experimental levee is build in a 1:1 scale and located in the village of Czernichow, near Cracow. The innovation is the utilization of a series of sensors monitoring the changes in the body of levee. It can be done by comparing the results of numerical simulations with results from installed two groups of sensors: reference sensors and experimental sensors. The reference control and measurement sensors create network based on pore pressure and temperature sensors. Additionally, it contains the fiber-optic technology. The second network include design experimental sensors, constructed for the development of solutions that can be used in existing flood embankments. The results are important to create the comprehensive and inexpensive monitoring system, which could be helpful for state authorities and local governments in flood protection.

  5. Flood Monitoring and Early Warning System Using Ultrasonic Sensor

    Science.gov (United States)

    Natividad, J. G.; Mendez, J. M.

    2018-03-01

    The purpose of this study is to develop a real-time flood monitoring and early warning system in the northern portion of the province of Isabela, particularly the municipalities near Cagayan River. Ultrasonic sensing techniques have become mature and are widely used in the various fields of engineering and basic science. One of advantage of ultrasonic sensing is its outstanding capability to probe inside objective non-destructively because ultrasound can propagate through any kinds of media including solids, liquids and gases. This study focuses only on the water level detection and early warning system (via website and/or SMS) that alerts concern agencies and individuals for a potential flood event. Furthermore, inquiry system is also included in this study to become more interactive wherein individuals in the community could inquire the actual water level and status of the desired area or location affected by flood thru SMS keyword. The study aims in helping citizens to be prepared and knowledgeable whenever there is a flood. The novelty of this work falls under the utilization of the Arduino, ultrasonic sensors, GSM module, web-monitoring and SMS early warning system in helping stakeholders to mitigate casualties related to flood. The paper envisions helping flood-prone areas which are common in the Philippines particularly to the local communities in the province. Indeed, it is relevant and important as per needs for safety and welfare of the community.

  6. Flood and Traffic Wireless Monitoring System for Smart Cities

    KAUST Repository

    Moussa, Mustafa

    2016-10-01

    The convergence of computation, communication and sensing has led to the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which allow distributed monitoring of physical phenomena over extended areas. In this thesis, we focus on a dual flood and traffic flow WSN applicable to urban environments. This fixed sensing system is based on the combination of ultrasonic range-finding with remote temperature sensing, and can sense both phenomena with a high degree of accuracy. This enables the monitoring of urban areas to lessen the impact of catastrophic flood events, by monitoring flood parameters and traffic flow to enable public evacuation and early warning, allocate the resources efficiently or control the traffic to make cities more productive and smarter. We present an implementation of the device, and illustrate its performance in water level estimation and rain detection using a novel combination of L1 regularized reconstruction and machine learning algorithms on a 6-month dataset involving four different sensors. Our results show that water level can be estimated with an uncertainty of 1 cm using a combination of thermal sensing and ultrasonic distance measurements. The demonstration of the performance included the detection of an actual flash flood event using two sensors located in Umm Al Qura University (Mecca). Finally, we show that Lagrangian (mobile) sensors can be used to inexpensively increase the performance of the system with respect to traffic sensing. These sensors are based on Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), which have never been investigated in the context of traffic ow monitoring before. We investigate the divergence of the speed estimation process, the lack of the calibration parameters of the system, and the problem of reconstructing vehicle trajectories evolving in a given transportation network. To address these problems, we propose an automatic calibration algorithm applicable to IMU-equipped ground vehicles, and an L1 regularized least squares

  7. A Real-Time Measurement System for Long-Life Flood Monitoring and Warning Applications

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Antonio Skarmeta Gómez

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available A flood warning system incorporates telemetered rainfall and flow/water level data measured at various locations in the catchment area. Real-time accurate data collection is required for this use, and sensor networks improve the system capabilities. However, existing sensor nodes struggle to satisfy the hydrological requirements in terms of autonomy, sensor hardware compatibility, reliability and long-range communication. We describe the design and development of a real-time measurement system for flood monitoring, and its deployment in a flash-flood prone 650 km2 semiarid watershed in Southern Spain. A developed low-power and long-range communication device, so-called DatalogV1, provides automatic data gathering and reliable transmission. DatalogV1 incorporates self-monitoring for adapting measurement schedules for consumption management and to capture events of interest. Two tests are used to assess the success of the development. The results show an autonomous and robust monitoring system for long-term collection of water level data inmany sparse locations during flood events.

  8. Systems and method for lagrangian monitoring of flooding conditions

    KAUST Repository

    Claudel, Christian G.

    2015-12-17

    A traffic monitoring system and method for mapping traffic speed and density while preserving privacy. The system can include fixed stations that make up a network and mobile probes that are associated with vehicles. The system and method do not gather, store, or transmit any unique or identifying information, and thereby preserves the privacy of members of traffic. The system and method provide real-time traffic density and speed mapping. The system and method can further be integrated with a complementary flood monitoring system and method.

  9. A Multi-Scale Flood Monitoring System Based on Fully Automatic MODIS and TerraSAR-X Processing Chains

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Enrico Stein

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available A two-component fully automated flood monitoring system is described and evaluated. This is a result of combining two individual flood services that are currently under development at DLR’s (German Aerospace Center Center for Satellite based Crisis Information (ZKI to rapidly support disaster management activities. A first-phase monitoring component of the system systematically detects potential flood events on a continental scale using daily-acquired medium spatial resolution optical data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS. A threshold set controls the activation of the second-phase crisis component of the system, which derives flood information at higher spatial detail using a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR based satellite mission (TerraSAR-X. The proposed activation procedure finds use in the identification of flood situations in different spatial resolutions and in the time-critical and on demand programming of SAR satellite acquisitions at an early stage of an evolving flood situation. The automated processing chains of the MODIS (MFS and the TerraSAR-X Flood Service (TFS include data pre-processing, the computation and adaptation of global auxiliary data, thematic classification, and the subsequent dissemination of flood maps using an interactive web-client. The system is operationally demonstrated and evaluated via the monitoring two recent flood events in Russia 2013 and Albania/Montenegro 2013.

  10. Decision Support for Flood Event Prediction and Monitoring

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mioc, Darka; Anton, François; Liang, Gengsheng

    2007-01-01

    In this paper the development of Web GIS based decision support system for flood events is presented. To improve flood prediction we developed the decision support system for flood prediction and monitoring that integrates hydrological modelling and CARIS GIS. We present the methodology for data...... integration, floodplain delineation, and online map interfaces. Our Web-based GIS model can dynamically display observed and predicted flood extents for decision makers and the general public. The users can access Web-based GIS that models current flood events and displays satellite imagery and digital...... elevation model integrated with flood plain area. The system can show how the flooding prediction based on the output from hydrological modeling for the next 48 hours along the lower Saint John River Valley....

  11. On the Use of Global Flood Forecasts and Satellite-Derived Inundation Maps for Flood Monitoring in Data-Sparse Regions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Beatriz Revilla-Romero

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Early flood warning and real-time monitoring systems play a key role in flood risk reduction and disaster response decisions. Global-scale flood forecasting and satellite-based flood detection systems are currently operating, however their reliability for decision-making applications needs to be assessed. In this study, we performed comparative evaluations of several operational global flood forecasting and flood detection systems, using 10 major flood events recorded over 2012–2014. Specifically, we evaluated the spatial extent and temporal characteristics of flood detections from the Global Flood Detection System (GFDS and the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS. Furthermore, we compared the GFDS flood maps with those from NASA’s two Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS sensors. Results reveal that: (1 general agreement was found between the GFDS and MODIS flood detection systems, (2 large differences exist in the spatio-temporal characteristics of the GFDS detections and GloFAS forecasts, and (3 the quantitative validation of global flood disasters in data-sparse regions is highly challenging. Overall, satellite remote sensing provides useful near real-time flood information that can be useful for risk management. We highlight the known limitations of global flood detection and forecasting systems, and propose ways forward to improve the reliability of large-scale flood monitoring tools.

  12. Best Practice for Rainfall Measurement, Torrential Flood Monitoring and Real Time Alerting System in Serbia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stefanovic, Milutin; Milojevic, Mileta; Zlatanovic, Nikola

    2014-05-01

    Serbia occupies 88.000 km2 and its confined zone menaced with torrent flood occupies 50.000km2. Floods on large rivers and torrents are the most frequent natural disasters in Serbia. This is the result of a geographic position and relief of Serbia. Therefore, defense from these natural disasters has been institutionalized since the 19th century. Through its specialized bodies and public companies, the State organized defense from floods on large rivers and protection of international and other main roads. The Topčiderska River is one of a number of rivers in Serbia that is a threat to both urban and rural environments. In this text, general characteristics of this river will be illustrated, as well as the historical natural hazards that have occurred in the part of Belgrade near Topčiderska River. Belgrade is the capital of Serbia, its political, administrative and financial center, which means that there are significant financial capacities and human resources for investments in all sectors, and specially in the water resources sector. Along the Topčiderska catchment there are many industrial, traffic and residential structures that are in danger of floods and flood protection is more difficult with rapid high flows. The goal is to use monitoring on the Topčiderska River basin to set up a modern system for monitoring in real time and forecast of torrential floods. This paper represents a system of remote detection and monitoring of torrential floods and rain measurements in real time on Topciderka river and ready for a quick response.

  13. IoT-based flood embankments monitoring system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michta, E.; Szulim, R.; Sojka-Piotrowska, A.; Piotrowski, K.

    2017-08-01

    In the paper a concept of flood embankments monitoring system based on using Internet of Things approach and Cloud Computing technologies will be presented. The proposed system consists of sensors, IoT nodes, Gateways and Cloud based services. Nodes communicates with the sensors measuring certain physical parameters describing the state of the embankments and communicates with the Gateways. Gateways are specialized active devices responsible for direct communication with the nodes, collecting sensor data, preprocess the data, applying local rules and communicate with the Cloud Services using communication API delivered by cloud services providers. Architecture of all of the system components will be proposed consisting IoT devices functionalities description, their communication model, software modules and services bases on using a public cloud computing platform like Microsoft Azure will be proposed. The most important aspects of maintaining the communication in a secure way will be shown.

  14. Testing an innovative framework for flood forecasting, monitoring and mapping in Europe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dottori, Francesco; Kalas, Milan; Lorini, Valerio; Wania, Annett; Pappenberger, Florian; Salamon, Peter; Ramos, Maria Helena; Cloke, Hannah; Castillo, Carlos

    2017-04-01

    Between May and June 2016, France was hit by severe floods, particularly in the Loire and Seine river basins. In this work, we use this case study to test an innovative framework for flood forecasting, mapping and monitoring. More in detail, the system integrates in real-time two components of the Copernicus Emergency mapping services, namely the European Flood Awareness System and the satellite-based Rapid Mapping, with new procedures for rapid risk assessment and social media and news monitoring. We explore in detail the performance of each component of the system, demonstrating the improvements in respect to stand-alone flood forecasting and monitoring systems. We show how the performances of the forecasting component can be refined using the real-time feedback from social media monitoring to identify which areas were flooded, to evaluate the flood intensity, and therefore to correct impact estimations. Moreover, we show how the integration with impact forecast and social media monitoring can improve the timeliness and efficiency of satellite based emergency mapping, and reduce the chances of missing areas where flooding is already happening. These results illustrate how the new integrated approach leads to a better and earlier decision making and a timely evaluation of impacts.

  15. A UAV based system for real time flash flood monitoring in desert environments using Lagrangian microsensors

    KAUST Repository

    Abdelkader, Mohamed

    2013-05-01

    Floods are the most common natural disasters, causing thousands of casualties every year in the world. In particular, flash flood events are particularly deadly because of the short timescales on which they occur. Most casualties could be avoided with advance warning, for which real time monitoring is critical. While satellite-based high resolution weather forecasts can help predict floods to a certain extent, they are not reliable enough, as flood models depend on a large number of parameters that cannot be estimated beforehand. In this article, we present a novel flood sensing architecture to monitor large scale desert hydrological basins surrounding metropolitan areas, based on unmanned air vehicles. The system relies on Lagrangian (mobile) microsensors, that are released by a swarm of UAVs. A preliminary testbed implementing this technology is briefly described, and future research directions and problems are discussed. © 2013 IEEE.

  16. Near Real-Time Flood Monitoring and Impact Assessment Systems. Chapter 6; [Case Study: 2011 Flooding in Southeast Asia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ahamed, Aakash; Bolten, John; Doyle, Colin; Fayne, Jessica

    2016-01-01

    Floods are the costliest natural disaster, causing approximately 6.8 million deaths in the twentieth century alone. Worldwide economic flood damage estimates in 2012 exceed $19 Billion USD. Extended duration floods also pose longer term threats to food security, water, sanitation, hygiene, and community livelihoods, particularly in developing countries. Projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that precipitation extremes, rainfall intensity, storm intensity, and variability are increasing due to climate change. Increasing hydrologic uncertainty will likely lead to unprecedented extreme flood events. As such, there is a vital need to enhance and further develop traditional techniques used to rapidly assess flooding and extend analytical methods to estimate impacted population and infrastructure. Measuring flood extent in situ is generally impractical, time consuming, and can be inaccurate. Remotely sensed imagery acquired from space-borne and airborne sensors provides a viable platform for consistent and rapid wall-to-wall monitoring of large flood events through time. Terabytes of freely available satellite imagery are made available online each day by NASA, ESA, and other international space research institutions. Advances in cloud computing and data storage technologies allow researchers to leverage these satellite data and apply analytical methods at scale. Repeat-survey earth observations help provide insight about how natural phenomena change through time, including the progression and recession of floodwaters. In recent years, cloud-penetrating radar remote sensing techniques (e.g., Synthetic Aperture Radar) and high temporal resolution imagery platforms (e.g., MODIS and its 1-day return period), along with high performance computing infrastructure, have enabled significant advances in software systems that provide flood warning, assessments, and hazard reduction potential. By incorporating social and economic data

  17. A Novel Dual Traffic/Flash Flood Monitoring System Using Passive Infrared/Ultrasonic Sensors

    KAUST Repository

    Mousa, Mustafa

    2015-10-19

    Floods are the most common type of natural disaster, causing thousands of casualties every year. Among these events, urban flash floods are particularly deadly because of the short timescales on which they occur, and because of the high concentration of population in cities. Since most flash flood casualties are caused by a lack of information, it is critical to generate accurate and detailed warnings of flash floods. However, deploying an infrastructure that solely monitor flash floods makes little economic sense, since the average periodicity of catastrophic flash floods exceeds the lifetime of a typical sensor network. To address this issue, we propose a new sensing device that can simultaneously monitor urban flash floods and another phenomenon of interest (traffic congestion on the present case). This sensing device is based on the combination of an ultrasonic rangefinder with one or multiple remote temperature sensors. We show an implementation of this device, and illustrate its performance in both traffic flow and flash flood sensing. Field data shows that the sensor can detect vehicles with a 99% accuracy, in addition to estimating their speed and classifying them in function of their length. The same sensor can also monitor urban water levels with an accuracy of less than 2 cm. Two of the sensors have been deployed in a flood prone area, where they captured the only (minor) flash flood that occurred over the one-year test period, with no false detection, and an agreement in the estimated water level estimate (during the flash flood event) of about 2 cm.

  18. A Novel Dual Traffic/Flash Flood Monitoring System Using Passive Infrared/Ultrasonic Sensors

    KAUST Repository

    Mousa, Mustafa; Odat, Enas M.; Claudel, Christian

    2015-01-01

    Floods are the most common type of natural disaster, causing thousands of casualties every year. Among these events, urban flash floods are particularly deadly because of the short timescales on which they occur, and because of the high concentration of population in cities. Since most flash flood casualties are caused by a lack of information, it is critical to generate accurate and detailed warnings of flash floods. However, deploying an infrastructure that solely monitor flash floods makes little economic sense, since the average periodicity of catastrophic flash floods exceeds the lifetime of a typical sensor network. To address this issue, we propose a new sensing device that can simultaneously monitor urban flash floods and another phenomenon of interest (traffic congestion on the present case). This sensing device is based on the combination of an ultrasonic rangefinder with one or multiple remote temperature sensors. We show an implementation of this device, and illustrate its performance in both traffic flow and flash flood sensing. Field data shows that the sensor can detect vehicles with a 99% accuracy, in addition to estimating their speed and classifying them in function of their length. The same sensor can also monitor urban water levels with an accuracy of less than 2 cm. Two of the sensors have been deployed in a flood prone area, where they captured the only (minor) flash flood that occurred over the one-year test period, with no false detection, and an agreement in the estimated water level estimate (during the flash flood event) of about 2 cm.

  19. On the reliable use of satellite-derived surface water products for global flood monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirpa, F. A.; Revilla-Romero, B.; Thielen, J.; Salamon, P.; Brakenridge, R.; Pappenberger, F.; de Groeve, T.

    2015-12-01

    Early flood warning and real-time monitoring systems play a key role in flood risk reduction and disaster response management. To this end, real-time flood forecasting and satellite-based detection systems have been developed at global scale. However, due to the limited availability of up-to-date ground observations, the reliability of these systems for real-time applications have not been assessed in large parts of the globe. In this study, we performed comparative evaluations of the commonly used satellite-based global flood detections and operational flood forecasting system using 10 major flood cases reported over three years (2012-2014). Specially, we assessed the flood detection capabilities of the near real-time global flood maps from the Global Flood Detection System (GFDS), and from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the operational forecasts from the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) for the major flood events recorded in global flood databases. We present the evaluation results of the global flood detection and forecasting systems in terms of correctly indicating the reported flood events and highlight the exiting limitations of each system. Finally, we propose possible ways forward to improve the reliability of large scale flood monitoring tools.

  20. Flood and Traffic Wireless Monitoring System for Smart Cities

    KAUST Repository

    Mousa, Mustafa

    2016-01-01

    The convergence of computation, communication and sensing has led to the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which allow distributed monitoring of physical phenomena over extended areas. In this thesis, we focus on a dual flood and traffic

  1. Applications of TRMM-based Multi-Satellite Precipitation Estimation for Global Runoff Simulation: Prototyping a Global Flood Monitoring System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hong, Yang; Adler, Robert F.; Huffman, George J.; Pierce, Harold

    2008-01-01

    Advances in flood monitoring/forecasting have been constrained by the difficulty in estimating rainfall continuously over space (catchment-, national-, continental-, or even global-scale areas) and flood-relevant time scale. With the recent availability of satellite rainfall estimates at fine time and space resolution, this paper describes a prototype research framework for global flood monitoring by combining real-time satellite observations with a database of global terrestrial characteristics through a hydrologically relevant modeling scheme. Four major components included in the framework are (1) real-time precipitation input from NASA TRMM-based Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA); (2) a central geospatial database to preprocess the land surface characteristics: water divides, slopes, soils, land use, flow directions, flow accumulation, drainage network etc.; (3) a modified distributed hydrological model to convert rainfall to runoff and route the flow through the stream network in order to predict the timing and severity of the flood wave, and (4) an open-access web interface to quickly disseminate flood alerts for potential decision-making. Retrospective simulations for 1998-2006 demonstrate that the Global Flood Monitor (GFM) system performs consistently at both station and catchment levels. The GFM website (experimental version) has been running at near real-time in an effort to offer a cost-effective solution to the ultimate challenge of building natural disaster early warning systems for the data-sparse regions of the world. The interactive GFM website shows close-up maps of the flood risks overlaid on topography/population or integrated with the Google-Earth visualization tool. One additional capability, which extends forecast lead-time by assimilating QPF into the GFM, also will be implemented in the future.

  2. A Monitoring System for Mountain Flood Geological Hazard Based on Internet of Things

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    HUANGFU Zhong-Min

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available In order to avoid the shortcomings of the poor real-time data collection and the insufficient information coverage in the traditional geological hazard disaster monitoring measures, this paper designs a monitoring system for mountain flood geological hazard based on the Internet of Things, in which the overall architecture of the system is built, and the design of hardware combined with its driver program for the remote terminal system is presented in detail. This system uses STC12C5A60S2 MCU as the core controller to handle such data as rainfall, groundwater level and displacement of the mountain which are collected by the sensors, and employs GPS module to get the location information. Then the data processed is encapsulated into TCP/IP data packs by GPRS module. Through GPRS accessing the Internet, these data packs are transmitted to the monitoring center. The experimental results show that the system has good reliability, stability and real-time in communication.

  3. Flood early warning system : Design, implementation and computational modules

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Shirshov, G.S.; Melnikova, N.B.; Belleman, R.G.; Rusadi, F.I.; Broekhuijsen, B.J.; Gouldby, B.P.; Lhomme, J.; Balis, B.; Bubak, M.; Pyayt, A.L.; Mokhov, I.I.; Ozhigin, A.V.; Lang, B.; Meijer, R.J.

    2011-01-01

    We present a prototype of the flood early warning system (EWS) developed within the UrbanFlood FP7 project. The system monitors sensor networks installed in flood defenses (dikes, dams, embankments, etc.), detects sensor signal abnormalities, calculates dike failure probability, and simulates

  4. Development of Hydrometeorological Monitoring and Forecasting as AN Essential Component of the Early Flood Warning System:

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manukalo, V.

    2012-12-01

    Defining issue The river inundations are the most common and destructive natural hazards in Ukraine. Among non-structural flood management and protection measures a creation of the Early Flood Warning System is extremely important to be able to timely recognize dangerous situations in the flood-prone areas. Hydrometeorological information and forecasts are a core importance in this system. The primary factors affecting reliability and a lead - time of forecasts include: accuracy, speed and reliability with which real - time data are collected. The existing individual conception of monitoring and forecasting resulted in a need in reconsideration of the concept of integrated monitoring and forecasting approach - from "sensors to database and forecasters". Result presentation The Project: "Development of Flood Monitoring and Forecasting in the Ukrainian part of the Dniester River Basin" is presented. The project is developed by the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Service in a conjunction with the Water Management Agency and the Energy Company "Ukrhydroenergo". The implementation of the Project is funded by the Ukrainian Government and the World Bank. The author is nominated as the responsible person for coordination of activity of organizations involved in the Project. The term of the Project implementation: 2012 - 2014. The principal objectives of the Project are: a) designing integrated automatic hydrometeorological measurement network (including using remote sensing technologies); b) hydrometeorological GIS database construction and coupling with electronic maps for flood risk assessment; c) interface-construction classic numerical database -GIS and with satellite images, and radar data collection; d) providing the real-time data dissemination from observation points to forecasting centers; e) developing hydrometeoroogical forecasting methods; f) providing a flood hazards risk assessment for different temporal and spatial scales; g) providing a dissemination of

  5. Fibre Bragg grating for flood embankment monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Markowski, Konrad; Nevar, Stanislau; Dworzanski, Adam; Hackiewicz, Krzysztof; Jedrzejewski, Kazimierz

    2014-11-01

    In this article we present the preliminary studies for the flood embankment monitoring system based on the fibre Bragg gratings. The idea of the system is presented. The Bragg resonance shift is transformed to the change of the power detected by the standard InGaAs photodiode. The discrimination of the received power was executed by another fibre Bragg grating with different parameters. The project of the fully functional system is presented as well.

  6. Development of Integrated Flood Analysis System for Improving Flood Mitigation Capabilities in Korea

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moon, Young-Il; Kim, Jong-suk

    2016-04-01

    Recently, the needs of people are growing for a more safety life and secure homeland from unexpected natural disasters. Flood damages have been recorded every year and those damages are greater than the annual average of 2 trillion won since 2000 in Korea. It has been increased in casualties and property damages due to flooding caused by hydrometeorlogical extremes according to climate change. Although the importance of flooding situation is emerging rapidly, studies related to development of integrated management system for reducing floods are insufficient in Korea. In addition, it is difficult to effectively reduce floods without developing integrated operation system taking into account of sewage pipe network configuration with the river level. Since the floods result in increasing damages to infrastructure, as well as life and property, structural and non-structural measures should be urgently established in order to effectively reduce the flood. Therefore, in this study, we developed an integrated flood analysis system that systematized technology to quantify flood risk and flood forecasting for supporting synthetic decision-making through real-time monitoring and prediction on flash rain or short-term rainfall by using radar and satellite information in Korea. Keywords: Flooding, Integrated flood analysis system, Rainfall forecasting, Korea Acknowledgments This work was carried out with the support of "Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (Project No. PJ011686022015)" Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea

  7. Flood early warning system: sensors and internet

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pengel, B.E.; Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Melnikova, N.B.; Shirshov, G.S.; Koelewijn, A.R.; Pyayt, A.L.; Mokhov, I.I.; Chavoshian, A.; Takeuchi, K.

    2013-01-01

    The UrbanFlood early warning system (EWS) is designed to monitor data from very large sensornetworks in flood defences such as embankments, dikes, levees, and dams. The EWS, based on the internet, uses real-time sensor information and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to immediately calculate the

  8. Global and Regional Real-time Systems for Flood and Drought Monitoring and Prediction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hong, Y.; Gourley, J. J.; Xue, X.; Flamig, Z.

    2015-12-01

    A Hydrometeorological Extreme Mapping and Prediction System (HyXtreme-MaP), initially built upon the Coupled Routing and Excess STorage (CREST) distributed hydrological model, is driven by real-time quasi-global TRMM/GPM satellites and by the US Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) radar network with dual-polarimetric upgrade to simulate streamflow, actual ET, soil moisture and other hydrologic variables at 1/8th degree resolution quasi-globally (http://eos.ou.edu) and at 250-meter 2.5-mintue resolution over the Continental United States (CONUS: http://flash.ou.edu).­ Multifaceted and collaborative by-design, this end-to-end research framework aims to not only integrate data, models, and applications but also brings people together (i.e., NOAA, NASA, University researchers, and end-users). This presentation will review the progresses, challenges and opportunities of such HyXTREME-MaP System used to monitor global floods and droughts, and also to predict flash floods over the CONUS.

  9. First evaluation of the utility of GPM precipitation in global flood monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, H.; Yan, Y.; Gao, Z.

    2017-12-01

    The Global Flood Monitoring System (GFMS) has been developed and used to provide real-time flood detection and streamflow estimates over the last few years with significant success shown by validation against global flood event data sets and observed streamflow variations (Wu et al., 2014). It has become a tool for various national and international organizations to appraise flood conditions in various areas, including where rainfall and hydrology information is limited. The GFMS has been using the TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) as its main rainfall input. Now, with the advent of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission there is an opportunity to significantly improve global flood monitoring and forecasting. GPM's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) multi-satellite product is designed to take advantage of various technical advances in the field and combine that with an efficient processing system producing "early" (4 hrs) and "late" (12 hrs) products for operational use. Specifically, this study is focused on (1) understanding the difference between the new IMERG products and other existing satellite precipitation products, e.g., TMPA, CMORPH, and ground observations; (2) addressing the challenge in the usage of the IMERG for flood monitoring through hydrologic models, given that only a short period of precipitation data record has been accumulated since the lunch of GPM in 2014; and (3) comparing the statistics of flood simulation based on the DRIVE model with IMERG, TMPA, CMORPH etc. as precipitation inputs respectively. Derivation of a global threshold map is a necessary step to define flood events out of modelling results, which requires a relatively longer historic information. A set of sensitivity tests are conducted by adjusting IMERG's light, moderate, heavy rain to existing precipitation products with long-term records separately, to optimize the strategy of PDF matching. Other aspects are also examined

  10. Hydrometeorological network for flood monitoring and modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Efstratiadis, Andreas; Koussis, Antonis D.; Lykoudis, Spyros; Koukouvinos, Antonis; Christofides, Antonis; Karavokiros, George; Kappos, Nikos; Mamassis, Nikos; Koutsoyiannis, Demetris

    2013-08-01

    Due to its highly fragmented geomorphology, Greece comprises hundreds of small- to medium-size hydrological basins, in which often the terrain is fairly steep and the streamflow regime ephemeral. These are typically affected by flash floods, occasionally causing severe damages. Yet, the vast majority of them lack flow-gauging infrastructure providing systematic hydrometric data at fine time scales. This has obvious impacts on the quality and reliability of flood studies, which typically use simplistic approaches for ungauged basins that do not consider local peculiarities in sufficient detail. In order to provide a consistent framework for flood design and to ensure realistic predictions of the flood risk -a key issue of the 2007/60/EC Directive- it is essential to improve the monitoring infrastructures by taking advantage of modern technologies for remote control and data management. In this context and in the research project DEUCALION, we have recently installed and are operating, in four pilot river basins, a telemetry-based hydro-meteorological network that comprises automatic stations and is linked to and supported by relevant software. The hydrometric stations measure stage, using 50-kHz ultrasonic pulses or piezometric sensors, or both stage (piezometric) and velocity via acoustic Doppler radar; all measurements are being temperature-corrected. The meteorological stations record air temperature, pressure, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, and precipitation. Data transfer is made via GPRS or mobile telephony modems. The monitoring network is supported by a web-based application for storage, visualization and management of geographical and hydro-meteorological data (ENHYDRIS), a software tool for data analysis and processing (HYDROGNOMON), as well as an advanced model for flood simulation (HYDROGEIOS). The recorded hydro-meteorological observations are accessible over the Internet through the www-application. The system is operational and its

  11. An experimental system for flood risk forecasting at global scale

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alfieri, L.; Dottori, F.; Kalas, M.; Lorini, V.; Bianchi, A.; Hirpa, F. A.; Feyen, L.; Salamon, P.

    2016-12-01

    Global flood forecasting and monitoring systems are nowadays a reality and are being applied by an increasing range of users and practitioners in disaster risk management. Furthermore, there is an increasing demand from users to integrate flood early warning systems with risk based forecasts, combining streamflow estimations with expected inundated areas and flood impacts. To this end, we have developed an experimental procedure for near-real time flood mapping and impact assessment based on the daily forecasts issued by the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS). The methodology translates GloFAS streamflow forecasts into event-based flood hazard maps based on the predicted flow magnitude and the forecast lead time and a database of flood hazard maps with global coverage. Flood hazard maps are then combined with exposure and vulnerability information to derive flood risk. Impacts of the forecasted flood events are evaluated in terms of flood prone areas, potential economic damage, and affected population, infrastructures and cities. To further increase the reliability of the proposed methodology we integrated model-based estimations with an innovative methodology for social media monitoring, which allows for real-time verification of impact forecasts. The preliminary tests provided good results and showed the potential of the developed real-time operational procedure in helping emergency response and management. In particular, the link with social media is crucial for improving the accuracy of impact predictions.

  12. A UAV based system for real time flash flood monitoring in desert environments using Lagrangian microsensors

    KAUST Repository

    Abdelkader, Mohamed; Shaqura, Mohammad; Claudel, Christian G.; Gueaieb, Wail

    2013-01-01

    with advance warning, for which real time monitoring is critical. While satellite-based high resolution weather forecasts can help predict floods to a certain extent, they are not reliable enough, as flood models depend on a large number of parameters

  13. Apparatus, System, And Method For Roadway Monitoring

    KAUST Repository

    Claudel, Christian G.

    2015-06-02

    An apparatus, system, and method for monitoring traffic and roadway water conditions. Traffic flow and roadway flooding is monitored concurrently through a wireless sensor network. The apparatus and system comprises ultrasound rangefinders monitoring traffic flow, flood water conditions, or both. Routing information may be calculated from the traffic conditions, such that routes are calculated to avoid roadways that are impassable or are slow due to traffic conditions.

  14. Apparatus, System, And Method For Roadway Monitoring

    KAUST Repository

    Claudel, Christian G.

    2015-01-01

    An apparatus, system, and method for monitoring traffic and roadway water conditions. Traffic flow and roadway flooding is monitored concurrently through a wireless sensor network. The apparatus and system comprises ultrasound rangefinders monitoring traffic flow, flood water conditions, or both. Routing information may be calculated from the traffic conditions, such that routes are calculated to avoid roadways that are impassable or are slow due to traffic conditions.

  15. Design of flood early warning system with wifi network based on smartphone

    Science.gov (United States)

    Supani, Ahyar; Andriani, Yuli; Taqwa, Ahmad

    2017-11-01

    Today, the development using internet of things enables activities surrounding us to be monitored, controlled, predicted and calculated remotely through connections to the internet network such as monitoring activities of long-distance flood warning with information technology. Applying an information technology in the field of flood early warning has been developed in the world, either connected to internet network or not. The internet network that has been done in this paper is the design of WiFi network to access data of rainfall, water level and flood status at any time with a smartphone coming from flood early warning system. The results obtained when test of data accessing with smartphone are in form of rainfall and water level graphs against time and flood status indicators consisting of 3 flood states: Standby 2, Standby 1 and Flood. It is concluded that data are from flood early warning system has been able to accessed and displayed on smartphone via WiFi network in any time and real time.

  16. A New Approach to Monitoring Coastal Marshes for Persistent Flooding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalcic, M. T.; Undersood, Lauren W.; Fletcher, Rose

    2012-01-01

    Many areas in coastal Louisiana are below sea level and protected from flooding by a system of natural and man-made levees. Flooding is common when the levees are overtopped by storm surge or rising rivers. Many levees in this region are further stressed by erosion and subsidence. The floodwaters can become constricted by levees and trapped, causing prolonged inundation. Vegetative communities in coastal regions, from fresh swamp forest to saline marsh, can be negatively affected by inundation and changes in salinity. As saltwater persists, it can have a toxic effect upon marsh vegetation causing die off and conversion to open water types, destroying valuable species habitats. The length of time the water persists and the average annual salinity are important variables in modeling habitat switching (cover type change). Marsh type habitat switching affects fish, shellfish, and wildlife inhabitants, and can affect the regional ecosystem and economy. There are numerous restoration and revitalization projects underway in the coastal region, and their effects on the entire ecosystem need to be understood. For these reasons, monitoring persistent saltwater intrusion and inundation is important. For this study, persistent flooding in Louisiana coastal marshes was mapped using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) time series of a Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). The time series data were derived for 2000 through 2009, including flooding due to Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. Using the NDWI, duration and extent of flooding can be inferred. The Time Series Product Tool (TSPT), developed at NASA SSC, is a suite of software developed in MATLAB(R) that enables improved-quality time series images to be computed using advanced temporal processing techniques. This software has been used to compute time series for monitoring temporal changes in environmental phenomena, (e.g. NDVI times series from MODIS), and was modified and used to

  17. Integration of Grid and Sensor Web for Flood Monitoring and Risk Assessment from Heterogeneous Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kussul, Nataliia; Skakun, Sergii; Shelestov, Andrii

    2013-04-01

    Over last decades we have witnessed the upward global trend in natural disaster occurrence. Hydrological and meteorological disasters such as floods are the main contributors to this pattern. In recent years flood management has shifted from protection against floods to managing the risks of floods (the European Flood risk directive). In order to enable operational flood monitoring and assessment of flood risk, it is required to provide an infrastructure with standardized interfaces and services. Grid and Sensor Web can meet these requirements. In this paper we present a general approach to flood monitoring and risk assessment based on heterogeneous geospatial data acquired from multiple sources. To enable operational flood risk assessment integration of Grid and Sensor Web approaches is proposed [1]. Grid represents a distributed environment that integrates heterogeneous computing and storage resources administrated by multiple organizations. SensorWeb is an emerging paradigm for integrating heterogeneous satellite and in situ sensors and data systems into a common informational infrastructure that produces products on demand. The basic Sensor Web functionality includes sensor discovery, triggering events by observed or predicted conditions, remote data access and processing capabilities to generate and deliver data products. Sensor Web is governed by the set of standards, called Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Different practical issues regarding integration of Sensor Web with Grids are discussed in the study. We show how the Sensor Web can benefit from using Grids and vice versa. For example, Sensor Web services such as SOS, SPS and SAS can benefit from the integration with the Grid platform like Globus Toolkit. The proposed approach is implemented within the Sensor Web framework for flood monitoring and risk assessment, and a case-study of exploiting this framework, namely the Namibia SensorWeb Pilot Project, is

  18. Monitoring the effects of floods on submerged macrophytes in a large river.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ibáñez, Carles; Caiola, Nuno; Rovira, Albert; Real, Montserrat

    2012-12-01

    The lower Ebro River (Catalonia, Spain) has recently undergone a regime shift from a phytoplankton to a macrophyte-dominated system. Macrophytes started to spread at the end of the 1990s and since 2002 artificial floods (flushing flows) of short duration (1-2 days) are released from the Riba-roja dam once or twice a year in order to reduce macrophyte density. The aim of this study was to analyse the spatiotemporal trends of the submerged macrophytes in two stretches of the lower Ebro River using high-resolution hydroacoustic methods, in order to elucidate the effects of artificial floods and natural floods on its distribution and abundance. Results showed that the mean cover in the two studied stretches (Móra and Ginestar) was not reduced after a flushing flow (from 36.59% to 55.85% in Móra, and from 21.18% to 21.05% in Ginestar), but it was greatly reduced after the natural flood (down to 9.79% in Móra and 2.04% in Ginestar); surprisingly the cover increased in Móra after the artificial flood. In order to increase the efficiency of floods in controlling macrophyte spreading, the magnitude and frequency of them should largely increase, as well as the suspended sediment load, approaching as much as possible to the original flood pattern before dam construction. Hydroacoustic methods combined with geostatistics and interpolation in GIS can accurately monitor spatiotemporal trends of submerged macrophytes in large rivers. This is the first article to apply this monitoring system to submerged macrophytes in rivers. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. Quantitative monitoring of gas flooding in oil-bearing reservoirs using a pulsed neutron tool

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ruhovets, N.; Wyatt, D.F. Jr.

    1991-01-01

    This paper reports on quantitative monitoring of gas flooding in oil bearing reservoirs which is unique in that saturations of three fluids (gas, oil and water) in the effective pore space have to be determined, while in most other applications saturation behind casing is determined only for two fluids: hydrocarbons and water. A new method has been developed to monitor gas flooding of oil reservoirs. The method is based on computing two porosities: true effective (base) porosity determined before gas flooding, and apparent effective (monitor) porosity determined after gas flooding. The base porosity is determined from open and/or cased hole porosity logs run before the flooding. When open hole logs are available, the cased hole porosity logs are calibrated against open hole log. The monitor porosity is determined from one of the cased hole porosity logs, such as a neutron log or count rate ratio curve from a pulsed neutron log run after the gas flooding. The base and monitor porosities provide determination of the hydrogen index of the reservoir fluid after the flooding. This hydrogen index is then used to determine saturation of the flood agent after flooding. Water saturation after flooding can be determined from the equation which relates neutron total cross section (Σm) to volumetric constituent cross sections, using Σm values from a monitor run (after flooding)

  20. Global Near Real-Time Satellite-based Flood Monitoring and Product Dissemination

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, M.; Slayback, D. A.; Policelli, F.; Brakenridge, G. R.; Tokay, M.

    2012-12-01

    , and are working to develop higher resolution flood detection using alternate sensors, including Landsat and various radar sensors. Although these provide better spatial resolution, this comes at the cost of being less timely. As of late 2011, the system expanded to fully global daily flood monitoring, with free public access to the generated products. These include GIS-ready files of flood and normal water extent (KML, shapefile, raster), and small scale graphic maps (10 degrees square) showing regional flood extent. We are now expanding product distribution channels to include live web services (WMS, etc), allowing easier access via standalone apps. We are also working to bring our product into the Pacific Disaster Center's Disaster Alert system and mobile app for wider accessibility.

  1. Detecting SYN flood attacks via statistical monitoring charts: A comparative study

    KAUST Repository

    Bouyeddou, Benamar

    2017-12-14

    Accurate detection of cyber-attacks plays a central role in safeguarding computer networks and information systems. This paper addresses the problem of detecting SYN flood attacks, which are the most popular Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Here, we compare the detection capacity of three commonly monitoring charts namely, a Shewhart chart, a Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) control chart and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) chart, in detecting SYN flood attacks. The comparison study is conducted using the publicly available benchmark datasets: the 1999 DARPA Intrusion Detection Evaluation Datasets.

  2. Monitoring and Mapping the Hurricane Harvey Flooding in Houston, Texas.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Balaji Bhaskar, M. S.

    2017-12-01

    Monitoring and Mapping the Hurricane Harvey Flooding in Houston, Texas.Urban flooding is a hazard that causes major destruction and loss of life. High intense precipitation events have increased significantly in Houston, Texas in recent years resulting in frequent river and bayou flooding. Many of the historical storm events such as Allison, Rita and Ike have caused several billion dollars in losses for the Houston-Galveston Region. A category 4 Hurricane Harvey made landfall on South Texas resulting in heavy precipitation from Aug 25 to 29 of 2017. About 1 trillion gallons of water fell across Harris County over a 4-day period. This amount of water covers Harris County's 1,800 square miles with an average of 33 inches of water. The long rain event resulted in an average 40inch rainfall across the area in several rain gauges and the maximum rainfall of 49.6 inches was recorded near Clear Creek. The objectives of our study are to 1) Process the Geographic Information System (GIS) and satellite data from the pre and post Hurricane Harvey event in Houston, Texas and 2) Analyze the satellite imagery to map the nature and pattern of the flooding in Houston-Galveston Region. The GIS data of the study area was downloaded and processed from the various publicly available resources such as Houston Galveston Area Council (HGAC), Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and Texas Natural Resource Information Systems (TNRIS). The satellite data collected soon after the Harvey flooding event were downloaded and processed using the ERDAS image processing software. The flood plain areas surrounding the Brazos River, Buffalo Bayou and the Addicks Barker reservoirs showed severe inundation. The different watershed areas affected by the catastrophic flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey were mapped and compared with the pre flooding event.

  3. STORM3: a new flood forecast management and monitoring system in accordance with the recent Italian national directive

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    A. Burastero

    2005-01-01

    Full Text Available The effectiveness of alert systems for civil protection purposes, defined as the ability to minimize the level of risk in a region subjected to an imminent flood event, strongly depends on availability and exploitability of information. It also depends on technical expertise and the ability to easily manage the civil protection actions through the organization into standardized procedures. Hydro-geologic and hydraulic risk estimation, based on the combination of different technical issues (in this case meteorological, hydro-geological, hydraulic matters, but also socio-economic ones, requires the integration between quasi-static and time-varying information within the same operative platform. Beside the real-time data exchange, a Decision Support System must provide tools which enable knowledge sharing among the civil protection centres. Moreover, due to the amount and heterogeneity of information, quality procedures become necessary to handle all forecasting and monitoring routines within operative centres, according to the latest national directive. In Italy procedures on the civil protection matter have been condensed into the Prime Minister's Directive (27 February 2004. STORM3, an innovative management and monitoring System for real-time flood forecasting and warning, takes in the Directive, supporting the operator step by step within the different phases of civil protection activities.

  4. Flood Foresight: A near-real time flood monitoring and forecasting tool for rapid and predictive flood impact assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Revilla-Romero, Beatriz; Shelton, Kay; Wood, Elizabeth; Berry, Robert; Bevington, John; Hankin, Barry; Lewis, Gavin; Gubbin, Andrew; Griffiths, Samuel; Barnard, Paul; Pinnell, Marc; Huyck, Charles

    2017-04-01

    The hours and days immediately after a major flood event are often chaotic and confusing, with first responders rushing to mobilise emergency responders, provide alleviation assistance and assess loss to assets of interest (e.g., population, buildings or utilities). Preparations in advance of a forthcoming event are becoming increasingly important; early warning systems have been demonstrated to be useful tools for decision markers. The extent of damage, human casualties and economic loss estimates can vary greatly during an event, and the timely availability of an accurate flood extent allows emergency response and resources to be optimised, reduces impacts, and helps prioritise recovery. In the insurance sector, for example, insurers are under pressure to respond in a proactive manner to claims rather than waiting for policyholders to report losses. Even though there is a great demand for flood inundation extents and severity information in different sectors, generating flood footprints for large areas from hydraulic models in real time remains a challenge. While such footprints can be produced in real time using remote sensing, weather conditions and sensor availability limit their ability to capture every single flood event across the globe. In this session, we will present Flood Foresight (www.floodforesight.com), an operational tool developed to meet the universal requirement for rapid geographic information, before, during and after major riverine flood events. The tool provides spatial data with which users can measure their current or predicted impact from an event - at building, basin, national or continental scales. Within Flood Foresight, the Screening component uses global rainfall predictions to provide a regional- to continental-scale view of heavy rainfall events up to a week in advance, alerting the user to potentially hazardous situations relevant to them. The Forecasting component enhances the predictive suite of tools by providing a local

  5. An Experimental System for a Global Flood Prediction: From Satellite Precipitation Data to a Flood Inundation Map

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adler, Robert

    2007-01-01

    Floods impact more people globally than any other type of natural disaster. It has been established by experience that the most effective means to reduce the property damage and life loss caused by floods is the development of flood early warning systems. However, advances for such a system have been constrained by the difficulty in estimating rainfall continuously over space (catchment-. national-, continental-. or even global-scale areas) and time (hourly to daily). Particularly, insufficient in situ data, long delay in data transmission and absence of real-time data sharing agreements in many trans-boundary basins hamper the development of a real-time system at the regional to global scale. In many countries around the world, particularly in the tropics where rainfall and flooding co-exist in abundance, satellite-based precipitation estimation may be the best source of rainfall data for those data scarce (ungauged) areas and trans-boundary basins. Satellite remote sensing data acquired and processed in real time can now provide the space-time information on rainfall fluxes needed to monitor severe flood events around the world. This can be achieved by integrating the satellite-derived forcing data with hydrological models, which can be parameterized by a tailored geospatial database. An example that is a key to this progress is NASA's contribution to the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), launched in November 1997. Hence, in an effort to evolve toward a more hydrologically-relevant flood alert system, this talk articulates a module-structured framework for quasi-global flood potential naming, that is 'up to date' with the state of the art on satellite rainfall estimation and the improved geospatial datasets. The system is modular in design with the flexibility that permits changes in the model structure and in the choice of components. Four major components included in the system are: 1) multi-satellite precipitation estimation; 2) characterization of

  6. Miniaturized Water Flow and Level Monitoring System for Flood Disaster Early Warning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ifedapo Abdullahi, Salami; Hadi Habaebi, Mohamed; Surya Gunawan, Teddy; Rafiqul Islam, MD

    2017-11-01

    This study presents the performance of a prototype miniaturised water flow and water level monitoring sensor designed towards supporting flood disaster early warning systems. The design involved selection of sensors, coding to control the system mechanism, and automatic data logging and storage. During the design phase, the apparatus was constructed where all the components were assembled using locally sourced items. Subsequently, under controlled laboratory environment, the system was tested by running water through the inlet during which the flow rate and rising water levels are automatically recorded and stored in a database via Microsoft Excel using Coolterm software. The system is simulated such that the water level readings measured in centimeters is output in meters using a multiplicative of 10. A total number of 80 readings were analyzed to evaluate the performance of the system. The result shows that the system is sensitive to water level rise and yielded accurate measurement of water level. But, the flow rate fluctuates due to the manual water supply that produced inconsistent flow. It was also observed that the flow sensor has a duty cycle of 50% of operating time under normal condition which implies that the performance of the flow sensor is optimal.

  7. Real-time Monitoring and Simulating of Urban Flood, a Case Study in Guangzhou

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, H.; Wang, X.; Zhang, S.; Liu, Y.

    2014-12-01

    In recent years urban flood frequently occurred and seriously impacted city's normal operation, particular on transportation. The increase of urban flood could be attributed to many factors, such as the increase of impervious land surface and extreme precipitation, the decrease of surface storage capacity, poor maintenance of drainage utilities, and so on. In order to provide accurate and leading prediction on urban flooding, this study acquires precise urban topographic data via air-borne Lidar system, collects detailed underground drainage pipes, and installs in-situ monitoring networks on precipitation, water level, video record and traffic speed in the downtown area of Panyu District, Guangzhou, China. Based on the above data acquired, a urban flood model with EPA SWMM5 is established to simulate the flooding and inundation processes in the study area of 20 km2. The model is driven by the real-time precipitation data and calibrated by the water level data, which are converted to flooding volume with precise topographic data. After calibration, the model could be employed to conduct sensitivity analysis for investigating primary factors of urban flooding, and to simulate the flooding processes in different scenarios, which are beneficial to assessment of flooding risk and drainage capacity. This model is expected to provide real-time forecasting in emergency management.

  8. Monitoring Streambed Scour/Deposition Under Nonideal Temperature Signal and Flood Conditions

    Science.gov (United States)

    DeWeese, Timothy; Tonina, Daniele; Luce, Charles

    2017-12-01

    Streambed erosion and deposition are fundamental geomorphic processes in riverbeds, and monitoring their evolution is important for ecological system management and in-stream infrastructure stability. Previous research showed proof of concept that analysis of paired temperature signals of stream and pore waters can simultaneously provide monitoring scour and deposition, stream sediment thermal regime, and seepage velocity information. However, it did not address challenges often associated with natural systems, including nonideal temperature variations (low-amplitude, nonsinusoidal signal, and vertical thermal gradients) and natural flooding conditions on monitoring scour and deposition processes over time. Here we addressed this knowledge gap by testing the proposed thermal scour-deposition chain (TSDC) methodology, with laboratory experiments to test the impact of nonideal temperature signals under a range of seepage velocities and with a field application during a pulse flood. Both analyses showed excellent match between surveyed and temperature-derived bed elevation changes even under very low temperature signal amplitudes (less than 1°C), nonideal signal shape (sawtooth shape), and strong and changing vertical thermal gradients (4°C/m). Root-mean-square errors on predicting the change in streambed elevations were comparable with the median grain size of the streambed sediment. Future research should focus on improved techniques for temperature signal phase and amplitude extractions, as well as TSDC applications over long periods spanning entire hydrographs.

  9. Flood Resilient Systems and their Application for Flood Resilient Planning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manojlovic, N.; Gabalda, V.; Antanaskovic, D.; Gershovich, I.; Pasche, E.

    2012-04-01

    Following the paradigm shift in flood management from traditional to more integrated approaches, and considering the uncertainties of future development due to drivers such as climate change, one of the main emerging tasks of flood managers becomes the development of (flood) resilient cities. It can be achieved by application of non-structural - flood resilience measures, summarised in the 4As: assistance, alleviation, awareness and avoidance (FIAC, 2007). As a part of this strategy, the key aspect of development of resilient cities - resilient built environment can be reached by efficient application of Flood Resilience Technology (FReT) and its meaningful combination into flood resilient systems (FRS). FRS are given as [an interconnecting network of FReT which facilitates resilience (including both restorative and adaptive capacity) to flooding, addressing physical and social systems and considering different flood typologies] (SMARTeST, http://www.floodresilience.eu/). Applying the system approach (e.g. Zevenbergen, 2008), FRS can be developed at different scales from the building to the city level. Still, a matter of research is a method to define and systematise different FRS crossing those scales. Further, the decision on which resilient system is to be applied for the given conditions and given scale is a complex task, calling for utilisation of decision support tools. This process of decision-making should follow the steps of flood risk assessment (1) and development of a flood resilience plan (2) (Manojlovic et al, 2009). The key problem in (2) is how to match the input parameters that describe physical&social system and flood typology to the appropriate flood resilient system. Additionally, an open issue is how to integrate the advances in FReT and findings on its efficiency into decision support tools. This paper presents a way to define, systematise and make decisions on FRS at different scales of an urban system developed within the 7th FP Project

  10. Near Real Time Flood Warning System for National Capital Territory of Delhi

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goyal, A.; Yadav, H.; Tyagi, H.; Gosain, A. K.

    2017-12-01

    Extreme floods are common phenomena during Indian Monsoons. The National Capital Territory area of India, Delhi, frequently experiences fluvial as well as pluvial inundation due to its proximity to river Yamuna and poor functioning of its stormwater drainage system. The urban floods result in severe waterlogging and heavy traffic snarls, bringing life in this megapolis to a halt. The city has witnessed six major floods since 1900 and thus its residents are well conscious of potential flood risks but the city still lacks a flood warning system. The flood related risks can be considerably reduced, if not eliminated, by issuing timely warnings and implementing adaptive measures. Therefore, the present study attempts to develop a web based platform that integrates Web-GIS technology and mathematical simulation modelling to provide an effective and reliable early flood warning service for Delhi. The study makes use of India Metorological Department's Doppler radar-derived near real time rainfall estimates of 15 minutes time step. The developed SWMM model has been validated using information from gauges, monitoring sensors and crowd sourcing techniques and utilises capabilities of cloud computing on server side for fast processing. This study also recommends safe evacuation policy and remedial measures for flooding hotspots as part of flood risk management plan. With heightened risk of floods in fast urbanizing areas, this work becomes highly pertinent as flood warning system with adequate lead time can not only save precious lives but can also substantially reduce flood damages.

  11. An approach for flood monitoring by the combined use of Landsat 8 optical imagery and COSMO-SkyMed radar imagery

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tong, Xiaohua; Luo, Xin; Liu, Shuguang; Xie, Huan; Chao, Wei; Liu, Shuang; Liu, Shijie; Makhinov, A. N.; Makhinova, A. F.; Jiang, Yuying

    2018-02-01

    Remote sensing techniques offer potential for effective flood detection with the advantages of low-cost, large-scale, and real-time surface observations. The easily accessible data sources of optical remote sensing imagery provide abundant spectral information for accurate surface water body extraction, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems represent a powerful tool for flood monitoring because of their all-weather capability. This paper introduces a new approach for flood monitoring by the combined use of both Landsat 8 optical imagery and COSMO-SkyMed radar imagery. Specifically, the proposed method applies support vector machine and the active contour without edges model for water extent determination in the periods before and during the flood, respectively. A map difference method is used for the flood inundation analysis. The proposed approach is particularly suitable for large-scale flood monitoring, and it was tested on a serious flood that occurred in northeastern China in August 2013, which caused immense loss of human lives and properties. High overall accuracies of 97.46% for the optical imagery and 93.70% for the radar imagery are achieved by the use of the techniques presented in this study. The results show that about 12% of the whole study area was inundated, corresponding to 5466 km2 of land surface.

  12. Radio monitoring of the Sozh-river flood plain

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kuznetsova, V.A.; Generalova, V.A.; Kol'nenkov, V.P.; Glaz, A.S.

    2001-01-01

    Periodic radiation monitoring supervision is the important parameter of the radioactivity level time control with reference to concrete landscapes, estimation and their ecological radiochemistry conditions forecast in order to accept practical measures for the risk radiation danger reduction. The early monitoring supervision was carried out in the area of radioactive anomalies in Sozh-river flood plain. The new data received in 1998 and 2000 are cited below. The radiation situation of the last landscape appropriating to conditions in central and near terrace Sozh-river flood plain, more than in 10 years, is nowadays characterized by the data of the structure of Veprin one. In coastal flood plain the maximal radioactivity is dated to meadow vegetable layer in downturn of relief or to humus horizon of actual soil on coastal shaft. In central flood plain it remains rather high with the tendency of accumulation in meliorative channels, which are nowadays strongly overgrown, in 1,6-1,9 times exceeding earlier supervision. Down the Sozh near the village Gronovo in 1988 the level of gamma activity meadow vegetable layer changed. Radioactive situation is low here nowadays: on meadow vegetable layer almost in 5 times lower than former one. It is explained by the active hydro mode snow melt flood streams at the abrupt bend of Sozh channel, resulting in meadows washing and silt material washout. The deepening of Cs-137 reaches 0,20 m and connects with the accumulation of isotope in the top part of humus horizon where it is fixed in the fixed form. Monitoring supervision on radio strontium in the section of Sozh-river flood plain near the village Gronovo shows, that in 1995 its maximal concentration is observed in humusided loamy sand under meadow vegetable layer; the main mass of isotope - up to 80 % - was concentrated in the top 30-sm layer. It is remarkable, that with depth, reducing the contents almost twice and not being marked in underlaying sands, this isotope

  13. Monitoring Coastal Marshes for Persistent Flooding and Salinity Stress

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalcic, Maria

    2010-01-01

    Our objective is to provide NASA remote sensing products that provide inundation and salinity information on an ecosystem level to support habitat switching models. Project born out of need by the Coastal Restoration Monitoring System (CRMS), joint effort by Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Geological Survey, for information on persistence of flooding by storm surge and other flood waters. The results of the this work support the habitat-switching modules in the Coastal Louisiana Ecosystem Assessment and Restoration (CLEAR) model, which provides scientific evaluation for restoration management. CLEAR is a collaborative effort between the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Anticipated results will use: a) Resolution enhanced time series data combining spatial resolution of Landsat with temporal resolution of MODIS for inundation estimates. b) Potential salinity products from radar and multispectral modeling. c) Combined inundation and salinity inputs to habitat switching module to produce habitat switching maps (shown at left)

  14. A web-based Tamsui River flood early-warning system with correction of real-time water stage using monitoring data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liao, H. Y.; Lin, Y. J.; Chang, H. K.; Shang, R. K.; Kuo, H. C.; Lai, J. S.; Tan, Y. C.

    2017-12-01

    Taiwan encounters heavy rainfalls frequently. There are three to four typhoons striking Taiwan every year. To provide lead time for reducing flood damage, this study attempt to build a flood early-warning system (FEWS) in Tanshui River using time series correction techniques. The predicted rainfall is used as the input for the rainfall-runoff model. Then, the discharges calculated by the rainfall-runoff model is converted to the 1-D river routing model. The 1-D river routing model will output the simulating water stages in 487 cross sections for the future 48-hr. The downstream water stage at the estuary in 1-D river routing model is provided by storm surge simulation. Next, the water stages of 487 cross sections are corrected by time series model such as autoregressive (AR) model using real-time water stage measurements to improve the predicted accuracy. The results of simulated water stages are displayed on a web-based platform. In addition, the models can be performed remotely by any users with web browsers through a user interface. The on-line video surveillance images, real-time monitoring water stages, and rainfalls can also be shown on this platform. If the simulated water stage exceeds the embankments of Tanshui River, the alerting lights of FEWS will be flashing on the screen. This platform runs periodically and automatically to generate the simulation graphic data of flood water stages for flood disaster prevention and decision making.

  15. A global flash flood forecasting system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baugh, Calum; Pappenberger, Florian; Wetterhall, Fredrik; Hewson, Tim; Zsoter, Ervin

    2016-04-01

    The sudden and devastating nature of flash flood events means it is imperative to provide early warnings such as those derived from Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) forecasts. Currently such systems exist on basin, national and continental scales in Europe, North America and Australia but rely on high resolution NWP forecasts or rainfall-radar nowcasting, neither of which have global coverage. To produce global flash flood forecasts this work investigates the possibility of using forecasts from a global NWP system. In particular we: (i) discuss how global NWP can be used for flash flood forecasting and discuss strengths and weaknesses; (ii) demonstrate how a robust evaluation can be performed given the rarity of the event; (iii) highlight the challenges and opportunities in communicating flash flood uncertainty to decision makers; and (iv) explore future developments which would significantly improve global flash flood forecasting. The proposed forecast system uses ensemble surface runoff forecasts from the ECMWF H-TESSEL land surface scheme. A flash flood index is generated using the ERIC (Enhanced Runoff Index based on Climatology) methodology [Raynaud et al., 2014]. This global methodology is applied to a series of flash floods across southern Europe. Results from the system are compared against warnings produced using the higher resolution COSMO-LEPS limited area model. The global system is evaluated by comparing forecasted warning locations against a flash flood database of media reports created in partnership with floodlist.com. To deal with the lack of objectivity in media reports we carefully assess the suitability of different skill scores and apply spatial uncertainty thresholds to the observations. To communicate the uncertainties of the flash flood system output we experiment with a dynamic region-growing algorithm. This automatically clusters regions of similar return period exceedence probabilities, thus presenting the at-risk areas at a spatial

  16. Hyper-resolution monitoring of urban flooding with social media and crowdsourcing data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Ruo-Qian; Mao, Huina; Wang, Yuan; Rae, Chris; Shaw, Wesley

    2018-02-01

    Hyper-resolution datasets for urban flooding are rare. This problem prevents detailed flooding risk analysis, urban flooding control, and the validation of hyper-resolution numerical models. We employed social media and crowdsourcing data to address this issue. Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision techniques are applied to the data collected from Twitter and MyCoast (a crowdsourcing app). We found these big data based flood monitoring approaches can complement the existing means of flood data collection. The extracted information is validated against precipitation data and road closure reports to examine the data quality. The two data collection approaches are compared and the two data mining methods are discussed. A series of suggestions is given to improve the data collection strategy.

  17. Iowa Flood Information System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, I.; Krajewski, W. F.; Goska, R.; Mantilla, R.; Weber, L. J.; Young, N.

    2011-12-01

    The Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) is a web-based platform developed by the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) to provide access to flood inundation maps, real-time flood conditions, flood forecasts both short-term and seasonal, flood-related data, information and interactive visualizations for communities in Iowa. The key element of the system's architecture is the notion of community. Locations of the communities, those near streams and rivers, define basin boundaries. The IFIS provides community-centric watershed and river characteristics, weather (rainfall) conditions, and streamflow data and visualization tools. Interactive interfaces allow access to inundation maps for different stage and return period values, and flooding scenarios with contributions from multiple rivers. Real-time and historical data of water levels, gauge heights, and rainfall conditions are available in the IFIS by streaming data from automated IFC bridge sensors, USGS stream gauges, NEXRAD radars, and NWS forecasts. Simple 2D and 3D interactive visualizations in the IFIS make the data more understandable to general public. Users are able to filter data sources for their communities and selected rivers. The data and information on IFIS is also accessible through web services and mobile applications. The IFIS is optimized for various browsers and screen sizes to provide access through multiple platforms including tablets and mobile devices. The IFIS includes a rainfall-runoff forecast model to provide a five-day flood risk estimate for around 500 communities in Iowa. Multiple view modes in the IFIS accommodate different user types from general public to researchers and decision makers by providing different level of tools and details. River view mode allows users to visualize data from multiple IFC bridge sensors and USGS stream gauges to follow flooding condition along a river. The IFIS will help communities make better-informed decisions on the occurrence of floods, and will alert communities

  18. Development of Real-Time System for Urban Flooding by Surcharge of Storm Drainge and River Inundation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shim, J. B.; Won, C. Y.; Park, J.; Lee, K.

    2017-12-01

    Korea experiences frequent flood disasters, which cause considerable economic losses and damages to towns and farms. Especially, a regional torrential storm is about 98.5mm/hr on September 21, 2010 in Seoul. The storm exceeds the capacity of urban drainage system of 75mm/hr, and 9,419 houses. How to monitor and control the urban flood disasters is an important issue in Korea. To mitigate the flood damage, a customizing system was developed to estimate urban floods and inundation using by integrating drainage system data and river information database which are managed by local governments and national agencies. In the case of Korean urban city, there are a lot of detention ponds and drainage pumping stations on end of drainage system and flow is going into river. The drainage pumping station, it is very important hydraulic facility for flood control between river and drainage system. So, it is possible to occur different patterns of flood inundation according to operation rule of drainage pumping station. A flood disaster is different damage as how to operate drainage pumping station and plan operation rule.

  19. Environment Agency England flood warning systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Strong, Chris; Walters, Mark; Haynes, Elizabeth; Dobson, Peter

    2015-04-01

    Context In England around 5 million homes are at risk of flooding. We invest significantly in flood prevention and management schemes but we can never prevent all flooding. Early alerting systems are fundamental to helping us reduce the impacts of flooding. The Environment Agency has had the responsibility for flood warning since 1996. In 2006 we invested in a new dissemination system that would send direct messages to pre-identified recipients via a range of channels. Since then we have continuously improved the system and service we offer. In 2010 we introduced an 'opt-out' service where we pre-registered landline numbers in flood risk areas, significantly increasing the customer base. The service has performed exceptionally well under intense flood conditions. Over a period of 3 days in December 2013, when England was experiencing an east coast storm surge, the system sent nearly 350,000 telephone messages, 85,000 emails and 70,000 text messages, with a peak call rate of around 37,000 per hour and 100% availability. The Floodline Warnings Direct (FWD) System FWD provides warnings in advance of flooding so that people at risk and responders can take action to minimise the impact of the flood. Warnings are sent via telephone, fax, text message, pager or e-mail to over 1.1 million properties located within flood risk areas in England. Triggers for issuing alerts and warnings include attained and forecast river levels and rainfall in some rapidly responding locations. There are three levels of warning: Flood Alert, Flood Warning and Severe Flood Warning, and a stand down message. The warnings can be updated to include relevant information to help inform those at risk. Working with our current provider Fujitsu, the system is under a programme of continuous improvement including expanding the 'opt-out' service to mobile phone numbers registered to at risk addresses, allowing mobile registration to the system for people 'on the move' and providing access to

  20. Flood early warning system in I.R. of Iran

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Samadi, Slina; Jamali, Javad B.; Javanmard, Soheila

    2004-01-01

    At the close of the twentieth century, natural hazards and disasters are one of the most common forms of disasters around the world. Natural disasters cause in significant loss of life and serious economic, environmental and social impacts that greatly retard the development process. Careful hazard assessment and planning, and a range of social, economic and political measures, can significantly contain these threats. Risk is defined as the potential for loss or damage as the result of a particular action or decision and Risk Management is a process consisting of well-defined steps which, when taken in sequence, support better decision making by contributing to a greater insight into risks and their impacts. Most commonly, there are three components in a natural disaster plan: monitoring and early warning; risk assessment; and mitigation and response. Given the improved tools and technologies available today, it is possible to provide disaster information and minimize the potential damage of disasters. In the following parts of the report, the national early warning systems for flood would be discussed, as one of the important component of natural disaster risk management. In 1. R. of Iran, also, different types of natural disasters occur, such as drought, flood, earthquake, sea-level rise, dust storm, hail, freezing and etc, but Flood hazard and disaster is one of the most frequent and damaging types of natural disasters. They have been the most common type of geophysical disaster in the latter half of the twentieth century in Iran, generating an estimated more than 20 percent of all disasters from 1950 to 2003. One of the hazardous floods of Iran occurred in Golestan and north of Khorasan provinces, located in north-east of the country, on August 2001 and 2002. In this regard, according to the responsibility of I. R. of Iran Meteorological Organization (IRIMO) on the flood forecasting, the early warning issue of the mentioned flood, issued within 48 hour's in

  1. Interactive Web-based Floodplain Simulation System for Realistic Experiments of Flooding and Flood Damage

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, I.

    2013-12-01

    Recent developments in web technologies make it easy to manage and visualize large data sets with general public. Novel visualization techniques and dynamic user interfaces allow users to create realistic environments, and interact with data to gain insight from simulations and environmental observations. The floodplain simulation system is a web-based 3D interactive flood simulation environment to create real world flooding scenarios. The simulation systems provides a visually striking platform with realistic terrain information, and water simulation. Students can create and modify predefined scenarios, control environmental parameters, and evaluate flood mitigation techniques. The web-based simulation system provides an environment to children and adults learn about the flooding, flood damage, and effects of development and human activity in the floodplain. The system provides various scenarios customized to fit the age and education level of the users. This presentation provides an overview of the web-based flood simulation system, and demonstrates the capabilities of the system for various flooding and land use scenarios.

  2. A Prototype Flood Early Warning SensorWeb System for Namibia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sohlberg, R. A.; Mandl, D.; Frye, S. W.; Cappelaere, P. G.; Szarzynski, J.; Policelli, F.; van Langenhove, G.

    2010-12-01

    During the past two years, there have been extensive floods in the country of Namibia, Africa which have affected up to a quarter of the population. Via a collaboration between a group funded by the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) at NASA that has been performing various SensorWeb prototyping activities for disasters, the Department of Hydrology in Namibia and the United Nations Space-based Information for Disaster and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER) , experiments were conducted on how to apply various satellite resources integrated into a SensorWeb architecture along with in-situ sensors such as river gauges and rain gauges into a flood early warning system. The SensorWeb includes a global flood model and a higher resolution basin specific flood model. Furthermore, flood extent and status is monitored by optical and radar types of satellites and integrated via some automation. We have taken a practical approach to find out how to create a working system by selectively using the components that provide good results. The vision for the future is to combine this with the country side dwelling unit data base to create risk maps that provide specific warnings to houses within high risk areas based on near term predictions. This presentation will show some of the highlights of the effort thus far plus our future plans.

  3. Satellites, tweets, forecasts: the future of flood disaster management?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dottori, Francesco; Kalas, Milan; Lorini, Valerio; Wania, Annett; Pappenberger, Florian; Salamon, Peter; Ramos, Maria Helena; Cloke, Hannah; Castillo, Carlos

    2017-04-01

    Floods have devastating effects on lives and livelihoods around the world. Structural flood defence measures such as dikes and dams can help protect people. However, it is the emerging science and technologies for flood disaster management and preparedness, such as increasingly accurate flood forecasting systems, high-resolution satellite monitoring, rapid risk mapping, and the unique strength of social media information and crowdsourcing, that are most promising for reducing the impacts of flooding. Here, we describe an innovative framework which integrates in real-time two components of the Copernicus Emergency mapping services, namely the European Flood Awareness System and the satellite-based Rapid Mapping, with new procedures for rapid risk assessment and social media and news monitoring. The integrated framework enables improved flood impact forecast, thanks to the real-time integration of forecasting and monitoring components, and increases the timeliness and efficiency of satellite mapping, with the aim of capturing flood peaks and following the evolution of flooding processes. Thanks to the proposed framework, emergency responders will have access to a broad range of timely and accurate information for more effective and robust planning, decision-making, and resource allocation.

  4. Cyber Surveillance for Flood Disasters

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shi-Wei Lo

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Regional heavy rainfall is usually caused by the influence of extreme weather conditions. Instant heavy rainfall often results in the flooding of rivers and the neighboring low-lying areas, which is responsible for a large number of casualties and considerable property loss. The existing precipitation forecast systems mostly focus on the analysis and forecast of large-scale areas but do not provide precise instant automatic monitoring and alert feedback for individual river areas and sections. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an easy method to automatically monitor the flood object of a specific area, based on the currently widely used remote cyber surveillance systems and image processing methods, in order to obtain instant flooding and waterlogging event feedback. The intrusion detection mode of these surveillance systems is used in this study, wherein a flood is considered a possible invasion object. Through the detection and verification of flood objects, automatic flood risk-level monitoring of specific individual river segments, as well as the automatic urban inundation detection, has become possible. The proposed method can better meet the practical needs of disaster prevention than the method of large-area forecasting. It also has several other advantages, such as flexibility in location selection, no requirement of a standard water-level ruler, and a relatively large field of view, when compared with the traditional water-level measurements using video screens. The results can offer prompt reference for appropriate disaster warning actions in small areas, making them more accurate and effective.

  5. Systems and method for lagrangian monitoring of flooding conditions

    KAUST Repository

    Claudel, Christian G.; Shamim, Atif; Farooqui, Muhammad Fahad

    2015-01-01

    A traffic monitoring system and method for mapping traffic speed and density while preserving privacy. The system can include fixed stations that make up a network and mobile probes that are associated with vehicles. The system and method do

  6. Effects of Flood Control Strategies on Flood Resilience Under Sociohydrological Disturbances

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sung, Kyungmin; Jeong, Hanseok; Sangwan, Nikhil; Yu, David J.

    2018-04-01

    A community capacity to cope with flood hazards, or community flood resilience, emerges from the interplay of hydrological and social processes. This interplay can be significantly influenced by the flood control strategy adopted by a society, i.e., how a society sets its desired flood protection level and strives to achieve this goal. And this interplay can be further complicated by rising land-sea level differences, seasonal water level fluctuations, and economic change. But not much research has been done on how various forms of flood control strategies affect human-flood interactions under these disturbances and therefore flood resilience in the long run. The current study is an effort to address these issues by developing a conceptual model of human-flood interaction mediated by flood control strategies. Our model extends the existing model of Yu et al. (2017), who investigated the flood resilience of a community-based flood protection system in coastal Bangladesh. The major extensions made in this study are inclusions of various forms of flood control strategies (both adaptive and nonadaptive ones), the challenge of rising land-sea level differences, and various high tide level scenarios generated from modifying the statistical variances and averages. Our results show that adaptive forms of flood control strategies tend to outperform nonadaptive ones for maintaining the model community's flood protection system. Adaptive strategies that dynamically adjust target flood protection levels through close monitoring of flood damages and social memories of flood risk can help the model community deal with various disturbances.

  7. Insightful monitoring of natural flood risk management features using a low-cost and participatory approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Starkey, Eleanor; Barnes, Mhari; Quinn, Paul; Large, Andy

    2016-04-01

    Pressures associated with flooding and climate change have significantly increased over recent years. Natural Flood Risk Management (NFRM) is now seen as being a more appropriate and favourable approach in some locations. At the same time, catchment managers are also encouraged to adopt a more integrated, evidence-based and bottom-up approach. This includes engaging with local communities. Although NFRM features are being more readily installed, there is still limited evidence associated with their ability to reduce flood risk and offer multiple benefits. In particular, local communities and land owners are still uncertain about what the features entail and how they will perform, which is a huge barrier affecting widespread uptake. Traditional hydrometric monitoring techniques are well established but they still struggle to successfully monitor and capture NFRM performance spatially and temporally in a visual and more meaningful way for those directly affected on the ground. Two UK-based case studies are presented here where unique NFRM features have been carefully designed and installed in rural headwater catchments. This includes a 1km2 sub-catchment of the Haltwhistle Burn (northern England) and a 2km2 sub-catchment of Eddleston Water (southern Scotland). Both of these pilot sites are subject to prolonged flooding in winter and flash flooding in summer. This exacerbates sediment, debris and water quality issues downstream. Examples of NFRM features include ponds, woody debris and a log feature inspired by the children's game 'Kerplunk'. They have been tested and monitored over the 2015-2016 winter storms using low-cost techniques by both researchers and members of the community ('citizen scientists'). Results show that monitoring techniques such as regular consumer specification time-lapse cameras, photographs, videos and 'kite-cams' are suitable for long-term and low-cost monitoring of a variety of NFRM features. These techniques have been compared against

  8. SERVIR-Africa: Developing an Integrated Platform for Floods Disaster Management in Africa

    Science.gov (United States)

    Macharia, Daniel; Korme, Tesfaye; Policelli, Fritz; Irwin, Dan; Adler, Bob; Hong, Yang

    2010-01-01

    SERVIR-Africa is an ambitious regional visualization and monitoring system that integrates remotely sensed data with predictive models and field-based data to monitor ecological processes and respond to natural disasters. It aims addressing societal benefits including floods and turning data into actionable information for decision-makers. Floods are exogenous disasters that affect many parts of Africa, probably second only to drought in terms of social-economic losses. This paper looks at SERVIR-Africa's approach to floods disaster management through establishment of an integrated platform, floods prediction models, post-event flood mapping and monitoring as well as flood maps dissemination in support of flood disaster management.

  9. Flood Risk Management in Iowa through an Integrated Flood Information System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, Ibrahim; Krajewski, Witold

    2013-04-01

    The Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) is a web-based platform developed by the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) to provide access to flood inundation maps, real-time flood conditions, flood forecasts both short-term and seasonal, flood-related data, information and interactive visualizations for communities in Iowa. The key element of the system's architecture is the notion of community. Locations of the communities, those near streams and rivers, define basin boundaries. The IFIS provides community-centric watershed and river characteristics, weather (rainfall) conditions, and streamflow data and visualization tools. Interactive interfaces allow access to inundation maps for different stage and return period values, and flooding scenarios with contributions from multiple rivers. Real-time and historical data of water levels, gauge heights, and rainfall conditions are available in the IFIS by streaming data from automated IFC bridge sensors, USGS stream gauges, NEXRAD radars, and NWS forecasts. Simple 2D and 3D interactive visualizations in the IFIS make the data more understandable to general public. Users are able to filter data sources for their communities and selected rivers. The data and information on IFIS is also accessible through web services and mobile applications. The IFIS is optimized for various browsers and screen sizes to provide access through multiple platforms including tablets and mobile devices. The IFIS includes a rainfall-runoff forecast model to provide a five-day flood risk estimate for around 1100 communities in Iowa. Multiple view modes in the IFIS accommodate different user types from general public to researchers and decision makers by providing different level of tools and details. River view mode allows users to visualize data from multiple IFC bridge sensors and USGS stream gauges to follow flooding condition along a river. The IFIS will help communities make better-informed decisions on the occurrence of floods, and will alert

  10. Near Real-Time Flood Monitoring and Impact Assessment Systems. Chapter 6; [Case Study: 2011 Flooding in Southeast Asia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ahamed, Aakash; Bolten, John; Doyle, C.; Fayne, Jessica

    2016-01-01

    Floods are the costliest natural disaster (United Nations 2004), causing approximately6.8 million deaths in the twentieth century alone (Doocy et al. 2013).Worldwide economic flood damage estimates in 2012 exceed $19 Billion USD(Munich Re 2013). Extended duration floods also pose longer term threats to food security, water, sanitation, hygiene, and community livelihoods, particularly in developing countries (Davies et al. 2014).Projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that precipitation extremes, rainfall intensity, storm intensity, and variability are increasing due to climate change (IPCC 2007). Increasing hydrologic uncertainty will likely lead to unprecedented extreme flood events. As such, there is a vital need to enhance and further develop traditional techniques used to rapidly assessflooding and extend analytical methods to estimate impacted population and infrastructure.

  11. Dedicated IT infrastructure for Smart Levee Monitoring and Flood Decision Support

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Balis Bartosz

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Smart levees are being increasingly investigated as a flood protection technology. However, in large-scale emergency situations, a flood decision support system may need to collect and process data from hundreds of kilometers of smart levees; such a scenario requires a resilient and scalable IT infrastructure, capable of providing urgent computing services in order to perform frequent data analyses required in decision making, and deliver their results in a timely fashion. We present the ISMOP IT infrastructure for smart levee monitoring, designed to support decision making in large-scale emergency situations. Most existing approaches to urgent computing services in decision support systems dealing with natural disasters focus on delivering quality of service for individual, isolated subsystems of the IT infrastructure (such as computing, storage, or data transmission. We propose a holistic approach to dynamic system management during both urgent (emergency and normal (non-emergency operation. In this approach, we introduce a Holistic Computing Controller which calculates and deploys a globally optimal configuration for the entire IT infrastructure, based on cost-of-operation and quality-of-service (QoS requirements of individual IT subsystems, expressed in the form of Service Level Agreements (SLAs. Our approach leads to improved configuration settings and, consequently, better fulfilment of the system’s cost and QoS requirements than would have otherwise been possible had the configuration of all subsystems been managed in isolation.

  12. Flood evolution assessment and monitoring using hydrological modelling techniques: analysis of the inundation areas at a regional scale

    Science.gov (United States)

    Podhoranyi, M.; Kuchar, S.; Portero, A.

    2016-08-01

    The primary objective of this study is to present techniques that cover usage of a hydrodynamic model as the main tool for monitoring and assessment of flood events while focusing on modelling of inundation areas. We analyzed the 2010 flood event (14th May - 20th May) that occurred in the Moravian-Silesian region (Czech Republic). Under investigation were four main catchments: Opava, Odra, Olše and Ostravice. Four hydrodynamic models were created and implemented into the Floreon+ platform in order to map inundation areas that arose during the flood event. In order to study the dynamics of the water, we applied an unsteady flow simulation for the entire area (HEC-RAS 4.1). The inundation areas were monitored, evaluated and recorded semi-automatically by means of the Floreon+ platform. We focused on information about the extent and presence of the flood areas. The modeled flooded areas were verified by comparing them with real data from different sources (official reports, aerial photos and hydrological networks). The study confirmed that hydrodynamic modeling is a very useful tool for mapping and monitoring of inundation areas. Overall, our models detected 48 inundation areas during the 2010 flood event.

  13. Flood and Weather Monitoring Using Real-time Twitter Data Streams

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, I.; Sit, M. A.; Sermet, M. Y.

    2016-12-01

    Social media data is a widely used source to making inference within public crisis periods and events in disaster times. Specifically, since Twitter provides large-scale data publicly in real-time, it is one of the most extensive resources with location information. This abstract provides an overview of a real-time Twitter analysis system to support flood preparedness and response using a comprehensive information-centric flood ontology and natural language processing. Within the scope of this project, we deal with acquisition and processing of real-time Twitter data streams. System fetches the tweets with specified keywords and classifies them as related to flooding or heavy weather conditions. The system uses machine learning algorithms to discover patterns using the correlation between tweets and Iowa Flood Information System's (IFIS) extensive resources. The system uses these patterns to forecast the formation and progress of a potential future flood event. While fetching tweets, predefined hashtags are used for filtering and enhancing the relevancy for selected tweets. With this project, tweets can also be used as an alternative data source where other data sources are not sufficient for specific tasks. During the disasters, the photos that people upload alongside their tweets can be collected and placed to appropriate locations on a mapping system. This allows decision making authorities and communities to see the most recent outlook of the disaster interactively. In case of an emergency, concentration of tweets can help the authorities to determine a strategy on how to reach people most efficiently while providing them the supplies they need. Thanks to the extendable nature of the flood ontology and framework, results from this project will be a guide for other natural disasters, and will be shared with the community.

  14. Artificial intelligence and finite element modelling for monitoring flood defence structures

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pyayt, A.L.; Mokhov, I.I.; Kozionov, A.; Kusherbaeva, V.; Melnikova, N.B.; Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Meijer, R.J.

    2011-01-01

    We present a hybrid approach to monitoring the stability of flood defence structures equipped with sensors. This approach combines the finite element modelling with the artificial intelligence for real-time signal processing and anomaly detection. This combined method has been developed for the

  15. Typhoon Doksuri Flooding in 2017 - High-Resolution Inundation Mapping and Monitoring from Sentinel Satellite SAR Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nghiem, S. V.; Nguyen, D. T.

    2017-12-01

    In 2017, typhoons and hurricanes have inflicted catastrophic flooding across extensive regions in many countries on several continents, including Asia and North America. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requested urgent support for flood mapping and monitoring in an emergency response to the devastating flood situation. An innovative satellite remote sensing method, called the Depolarization Reduction Algorithm for Global Observations of inundatioN (DRAGON), has been developed and implemented for use with Sentinel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite data at a resolution of 10 meters to identify, map, and monitor inundation including pre-existing water bodies and newly flooded areas. Because Sentinel SAR operates at C-band microwave frequency, it can be used for flood mapping regardless of could cover conditions typically associated with storms, and thus can provide immediate results without the need to wait for the clouds to clear out. In Southeast Asia, Typhoon Doksuri caused significant flooding across extensive regions in Vietnam and other countries in September 2017. Figure 1 presents the flood mapping result over a region around Hà Tĩnh (north central coast of Vietnam) showing flood inundated areas (in yellow) on 16 September 2017 together with pre-existing surface water (in blue) on 4 September 2017. This is just one example selected from a larger flood map covering an extensive region of about 250 km x 680 km all along the central coast of Vietnam.

  16. Development of detection techniques for monitoring and optimizing biocide dosing in seawater flooding systems

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Al-Moniee, M.A.; Al-Abeedi, F.N.; Koopal, C.G.J.; Akmal, N.; Sanders, P.F.; Veen, S. van

    2013-01-01

    Anaerobic microorganisms which are frequently associated with corrosion fail Control of bacterial activity are posing major challenge in Saudi Arabia's massive seawater flooding systems. Biocides are used to control bacteria throughout the oil industry. A study to explore the feasibility to develop

  17. Operational flood forecasting system of Umbria Region "Functional Centre

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berni, N.; Pandolfo, C.; Stelluti, M.; Ponziani, F.; Viterbo, A.

    2009-04-01

    The hydrometeorological alert office (called "Decentrate Functional Centre" - CFD) of Umbria Region, in central Italy, is the office that provides technical tools able to support decisions when significant flood/landslide events occur, furnishing 24h support for the whole duration of the emergency period, according to the national directive DPCM 27 February 2004 concerning the "Operating concepts for functional management of national and regional alert system during flooding and landslide events for civil protection activities purposes" that designs, within the Italian Civil Defence Emergency Management System, a network of 21 regional Functional Centres coordinated by a central office at the National Civil Protection Department in Rome. Due to its "linking" role between Civil Protection "real time" activities and environmental/planning "deferred time" ones, the Centre is in charge to acquire and collect both real time and quasi-static data: quantitative data from monitoring networks (hydrometeorological stations, meteo radar, ...), meteorological forecasting models output, Earth Observation data, hydraulic and hydrological simulation models, cartographic and thematic GIS data (vectorial and raster type), planning studies related to flooding areas mapping, dam managing plans during flood events, non instrumental information from direct control of "territorial presidium". A detailed procedure for the management of critical events was planned, also in order to define the different role of various authorities and institutions involved. Tiber River catchment, of which Umbria region represents the main upper-medium portion, includes also regional trans-boundary issues very important to cope with, especially for what concerns large dam behavior and management during heavy rainfall. The alert system is referred to 6 different warning areas in which the territory has been divided into and based on a threshold system of three different increasing critical levels according

  18. Flood effects on an Alaskan stream restoration project: the value of long-term monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Densmore, Roseann V.; Karle, Kenneth F.

    2009-01-01

    On a nationwide basis, few stream restoration projects have long-term programs in place to monitor the effects of floods on channel and floodplain configuration and floodplain vegetation, but long-term and event-based monitoring is required to measure the effects of these stochastic events and to use the knowledge for adaptive management and the design of future projects. This paper describes a long-term monitoring effort (15 years) on a stream restoration project in Glen Creek in Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The stream channel and floodplain of Glen Creek had been severely degraded over a period of 80 years by placer mining for gold, which left many reaches with unstable and incised streambeds without functioning vegetated floodplains. The objectives of the original project, initiated in 1991, were to develop and test methods for the hydraulic design of channel and floodplain morphology and for floodplain stabilization and riparian habitat recovery, and to conduct research and monitoring to provide information for future projects in similar degraded watersheds. Monitoring methods included surveyed stream cross-sections, vegetation plots, and aerial, ground, and satellite photos. In this paper we address the immediate and outlying effects of a 25-year flood on the stream and floodplain geometry and riparian vegetation. The long-term monitoring revealed that significant channel widening occurred following the flood, likely caused by excessive upstream sediment loading and the fairly slow development of floodplain vegetation in this climate. Our results illustrated design flaws, particularly in regard to identification and analysis of sediment sources and the dominant processes of channel adjustment.

  19. Review of the flood risk management system in Germany after the major flood in 2013

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Annegret H. Thieken

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Widespread flooding in June 2013 caused damage costs of €6 to 8 billion in Germany, and awoke many memories of the floods in August 2002, which resulted in total damage of €11.6 billion and hence was the most expensive natural hazard event in Germany up to now. The event of 2002 does, however, also mark a reorientation toward an integrated flood risk management system in Germany. Therefore, the flood of 2013 offered the opportunity to review how the measures that politics, administration, and civil society have implemented since 2002 helped to cope with the flood and what still needs to be done to achieve effective and more integrated flood risk management. The review highlights considerable improvements on many levels, in particular (1 an increased consideration of flood hazards in spatial planning and urban development, (2 comprehensive property-level mitigation and preparedness measures, (3 more effective flood warnings and improved coordination of disaster response, and (4 a more targeted maintenance of flood defense systems. In 2013, this led to more effective flood management and to a reduction of damage. Nevertheless, important aspects remain unclear and need to be clarified. This particularly holds for balanced and coordinated strategies for reducing and overcoming the impacts of flooding in large catchments, cross-border and interdisciplinary cooperation, the role of the general public in the different phases of flood risk management, as well as a transparent risk transfer system. Recurring flood events reveal that flood risk management is a continuous task. Hence, risk drivers, such as climate change, land-use changes, economic developments, or demographic change and the resultant risks must be investigated at regular intervals, and risk reduction strategies and processes must be reassessed as well as adapted and implemented in a dialogue with all stakeholders.

  20. 44 CFR 65.14 - Remapping of areas for which local flood protection systems no longer provide base flood protection.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... local flood protection systems no longer provide base flood protection. 65.14 Section 65.14 Emergency... § 65.14 Remapping of areas for which local flood protection systems no longer provide base flood... process of restoring a flood protection system that was: (i) Constructed using Federal funds; (ii...

  1. Flood forecasting and warning systems in Pakistan

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ali Awan, Shaukat

    2004-01-01

    Meteorologically, there are two situations which may cause three types of floods in Indus Basin in Pakistan: i) Meteorological Situation for Category-I Floods when the seasonal low is a semi permanent weather system situated over south eastern Balochistan, south western Punjab, adjoining parts of Sindh get intensified and causes the moisture from the Arabian Sea to be brought up to upper catchments of Chenab and Jhelum rivers. (ii) Meteorological Situation for Category-11 and Category-111 Floods, which is linked with monsoon low/depression. Such monsoon systems originate in Bay of Bengal region and then move across India in general west/north westerly direction arrive over Rajasthan or any of adjoining states of India. Flood management in Pakistan is multi-functional process involving a number of different organizations. The first step in the process is issuance of flood forecast/warning, which is performed by Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) utilizing satellite cloud pictures and quantitative precipitation measurement radar data, in addition to the conventional weather forecasting facilities. For quantitative flood forecasting, hydrological data is obtained through the Provincial Irrigation Department and WAPDA. Furthermore, improved rainfall/runoff and flood routing models have been developed to provide more reliable and explicit flood information to a flood prone population.(Author)

  2. iFLOOD: A Real Time Flood Forecast System for Total Water Modeling in the National Capital Region

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sumi, S. J.; Ferreira, C.

    2017-12-01

    Extreme flood events are the costliest natural hazards impacting the US and frequently cause extensive damages to infrastructure, disruption to economy and loss of lives. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew brought severe damage to South Carolina and demonstrated the importance of accurate flood hazard predictions that requires the integration of riverine and coastal model forecasts for total water prediction in coastal and tidal areas. The National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Ocean Service (NOS) provide flood forecasts for almost the entire US, still there are service-gap areas in tidal regions where no official flood forecast is available. The National capital region is vulnerable to multi-flood hazards including high flows from annual inland precipitation events and surge driven coastal inundation along the tidal Potomac River. Predicting flood levels on such tidal areas in river-estuarine zone is extremely challenging. The main objective of this study is to develop the next generation of flood forecast systems capable of providing accurate and timely information to support emergency management and response in areas impacted by multi-flood hazards. This forecast system is capable of simulating flood levels in the Potomac and Anacostia River incorporating the effects of riverine flooding from the upstream basins, urban storm water and tidal oscillations from the Chesapeake Bay. Flood forecast models developed so far have been using riverine data to simulate water levels for Potomac River. Therefore, the idea is to use forecasted storm surge data from a coastal model as boundary condition of this system. Final output of this validated model will capture the water behavior in river-estuary transition zone far better than the one with riverine data only. The challenge for this iFLOOD forecast system is to understand the complex dynamics of multi-flood hazards caused by storm surges, riverine flow, tidal oscillation and urban storm water. Automated system

  3. System And Method For Monitoring Traffic While Preserving Personal Privacy

    KAUST Repository

    Canepa, Edward

    2015-08-06

    A traffic monitoring system and method for mapping traffic speed and density while preserving privacy. The system can include fixed stations that make up a network and mobile probes that are associated with vehicles. The system and method do not gather, store, or transmit any unique or identifying information, and thereby preserves the privacy of members of traffic. The system and method provide real-time traffic density and speed mapping. The system and method can further be integrated with a complementary flood monitoring system and method.

  4. Forecast-based Integrated Flood Detection System for Emergency Response and Disaster Risk Reduction (Flood-FINDER)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arcorace, Mauro; Silvestro, Francesco; Rudari, Roberto; Boni, Giorgio; Dell'Oro, Luca; Bjorgo, Einar

    2016-04-01

    Most flood prone areas in the globe are mainly located in developing countries where making communities more flood resilient is a priority. Despite different flood forecasting initiatives are now available from academia and research centers, what is often missing is the connection between the timely hazard detection and the community response to warnings. In order to bridge the gap between science and decision makers, UN agencies play a key role on the dissemination of information in the field and on capacity-building to local governments. In this context, having a reliable global early warning system in the UN would concretely improve existing in house capacities for Humanitarian Response and the Disaster Risk Reduction. For those reasons, UNITAR-UNOSAT has developed together with USGS and CIMA Foundation a Global Flood EWS called "Flood-FINDER". The Flood-FINDER system is a modelling chain which includes meteorological, hydrological and hydraulic models that are accurately linked to enable the production of warnings and forecast inundation scenarios up to three weeks in advance. The system is forced with global satellite derived precipitation products and Numerical Weather Prediction outputs. The modelling chain is based on the "Continuum" hydrological model and risk assessments produced for GAR2015. In combination with existing hydraulically reconditioned SRTM data and 1D hydraulic models, flood scenarios are derived at multiple scales and resolutions. Climate and flood data are shared through a Web GIS integrated platform. First validation of the modelling chain has been conducted through a flood hindcasting test case, over the Chao Phraya river basin in Thailand, using multi temporal satellite-based analysis derived for the exceptional flood event of 2011. In terms of humanitarian relief operations, the EO-based services of flood mapping in rush mode generally suffer from delays caused by the time required for their activation, programming, acquisitions and

  5. Geo-social media as a proxy for hydrometeorological data for streamflow estimation and to improve flood monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Restrepo-Estrada, Camilo; de Andrade, Sidgley Camargo; Abe, Narumi; Fava, Maria Clara; Mendiondo, Eduardo Mario; de Albuquerque, João Porto

    2018-02-01

    Floods are one of the most devastating types of worldwide disasters in terms of human, economic, and social losses. If authoritative data is scarce, or unavailable for some periods, other sources of information are required to improve streamflow estimation and early flood warnings. Georeferenced social media messages are increasingly being regarded as an alternative source of information for coping with flood risks. However, existing studies have mostly concentrated on the links between geo-social media activity and flooded areas. Thus, there is still a gap in research with regard to the use of social media as a proxy for rainfall-runoff estimations and flood forecasting. To address this, we propose using a transformation function that creates a proxy variable for rainfall by analysing geo-social media messages and rainfall measurements from authoritative sources, which are later incorporated within a hydrological model for streamflow estimation. We found that the combined use of official rainfall values with the social media proxy variable as input for the Probability Distributed Model (PDM), improved streamflow simulations for flood monitoring. The combination of authoritative sources and transformed geo-social media data during flood events achieved a 71% degree of accuracy and a 29% underestimation rate in a comparison made with real streamflow measurements. This is a significant improvement on the respective values of 39% and 58%, achieved when only authoritative data were used for the modelling. This result is clear evidence of the potential use of derived geo-social media data as a proxy for environmental variables for improving flood early-warning systems.

  6. Flood Risk, Flood Mitigation, and Location Choice: Evaluating the National Flood Insurance Program's Community Rating System.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fan, Qin; Davlasheridze, Meri

    2016-06-01

    Climate change is expected to worsen the negative effects of natural disasters like floods. The negative impacts, however, can be mitigated by individuals' adjustments through migration and relocation behaviors. Previous literature has identified flood risk as one significant driver in relocation decisions, but no prior study examines the effect of the National Flood Insurance Program's voluntary program-the Community Rating System (CRS)-on residential location choice. This article fills this gap and tests the hypothesis that flood risk and the CRS-creditable flood control activities affect residential location choices. We employ a two-stage sorting model to empirically estimate the effects. In the first stage, individuals' risk perception and preference heterogeneity for the CRS activities are considered, while mean effects of flood risk and the CRS activities are estimated in the second stage. We then estimate heterogeneous marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for the CRS activities by category. Results show that age, ethnicity and race, educational attainment, and prior exposure to risk explain risk perception. We find significant values for the CRS-creditable mitigation activities, which provides empirical evidence for the benefits associated with the program. The marginal WTP for an additional credit point earned for public information activities, including hazard disclosure, is found to be the highest. Results also suggest that water amenities dominate flood risk. Thus, high amenity values may increase exposure to flood risk, and flood mitigation projects should be strategized in coastal regions accordingly. © 2015 Society for Risk Analysis.

  7. Assessment of the Change Detection Procedure Dedicated to Flood Monitoring Using Envisat Wide Swath Mode Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Jiren; Yesou, Herve; Malosti, Rita; Andreoli, Remi; Huang, Shifeng; Xin, Jingfeng; Cattaneo, Fabrizia

    2008-04-01

    The Flood Dragon project enhances the Envisat contribution for natural disaster monitoring. Flood DFRAGON project had much more exploited the ENVISAT resource for crisis management than the International Charter Space and major Disasters since 2002. Indeed, during the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Chinese flood seasons, over the 27 attempted NRT exploitations of Envisat, 23 were successful. Obtained results over floods, affecting Yangtze and Songua, Huaihe watersheds as pollution events on Taihue lake and Nen River are illustrated. Lessons are discussed in terms of programming, downloading, processing, and images type and format. Recommendations for the background mission of the future Sentinel 1 constellation are given.

  8. Impact of social preparedness on flood early warning systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Girons Lopez, M.; Di Baldassarre, G.; Seibert, J.

    2017-01-01

    Flood early warning systems play a major role in the disaster risk reduction paradigm as cost-effective methods to mitigate flood disaster damage. The connections and feedbacks between the hydrological and social spheres of early warning systems are increasingly being considered as key aspects for successful flood mitigation. The behavior of the public and first responders during flood situations, determined by their preparedness, is heavily influenced by many behavioral traits such as perceived benefits, risk awareness, or even denial. In this study, we use the recency of flood experiences as a proxy for social preparedness to assess its impact on the efficiency of flood early warning systems through a simple stylized model and implemented this model using a simple mathematical description. The main findings, which are based on synthetic data, point to the importance of social preparedness for flood loss mitigation, especially in circumstances where the technical forecasting and warning capabilities are limited. Furthermore, we found that efforts to promote and preserve social preparedness may help to reduce disaster-induced losses by almost one half. The findings provide important insights into the role of social preparedness that may help guide decision-making in the field of flood early warning systems.

  9. Monitoring the variability of precipitable water vapor over the Klang Valley, Malaysia during flash flood

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Suparta, W; Rahman, R; Singh, M S J

    2014-01-01

    Klang Valley is a focal area of Malaysian economic and business activities where the local weather condition is very important to maintain its reputation. Heavy rainfalls for more than an hour were reported up to 40 mm in September 2013 and 35 mm in October 2013. Both events are monitored as the first and second cases of flash flood, respectively. Based on these cases, we investigate the water vapor, rainfall, surface meteorological data (surface pressure, relative humidity, and temperature) and river water level. The precipitable water vapor (PWV) derived from Global Positioning System (GPS) is used to indicate the impact of flash flood on the rainfall. We found that PWV was dropped 4 mm in 2 hours before rainfall reached to 40 mm and dropped 3 mm in 3 hours before 35 mm of rainfall in respective cases. Variation of PWV was higher in September case compared to October case of about 2 mm. We suggest the rainfall phenomena can disturb the GPS propagation and therefore, the impact of PWV before, during and after the flash flood event at three selected GPS stations in Klang Valley is investigated for possible mitigation in the future

  10. Use of NOAA-N satellites for land/water discrimination and flood monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tappan, G.; Horvath, N. C.; Doraiswamy, P. C.; Engman, T.; Goss, D. W. (Principal Investigator)

    1983-01-01

    A tool for monitoring the extent of major floods was developed using data collected by the NOAA-6 advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR). A basic understanding of the spectral returns in AVHRR channels 1 and 2 for water, soil, and vegetation was reached using a large number of NOAA-6 scenes from different seasons and geographic locations. A look-up table classifier was developed based on analysis of the reflective channel relationships for each surface feature. The classifier automatically separated land from water and produced classification maps which were registered for a number of acquisitions, including coverage of a major flood on the Parana River of Argentina.

  11. Application research for 4D technology in flood forecasting and evaluation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Ziwei; Liu, Yutong; Cao, Hongjie

    1998-08-01

    In order to monitor the region which disaster flood happened frequently in China, satisfy the great need of province governments for high accuracy monitoring and evaluated data for disaster and improve the efficiency for repelling disaster, under the Ninth Five-year National Key Technologies Programme, the method was researched for flood forecasting and evaluation using satellite and aerial remoted sensed image and land monitor data. The effective and practicable flood forecasting and evaluation system was established and DongTing Lake was selected as the test site. Modern Digital photogrammetry, remote sensing and GIS technology was used in this system, the disastrous flood could be forecasted and loss can be evaluated base on '4D' (DEM -- Digital Elevation Model, DOQ -- Digital OrthophotoQuads, DRG -- Digital Raster Graph, DTI -- Digital Thematic Information) disaster background database. The technology of gathering and establishing method for '4D' disaster environment background database, application technology for flood forecasting and evaluation based on '4D' background data and experimental results for DongTing Lake test site were introduced in detail in this paper.

  12. Building a High-Precision 2D Hydrodynamic Flood Model Using UAV Photogrammetry and Sensor Network Monitoring

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jakub Langhammer

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available This paper explores the potential of the joint application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV-based photogrammetry and an automated sensor network for building a hydrodynamic flood model of a montane stream. UAV-based imagery was used for three-dimensional (3D photogrammetric reconstruction of the stream channel, achieving a resolution of 1.5 cm/pixel. Automated ultrasonic water level gauges, operating with a 10 min interval, were used as a source of hydrological data for the model calibration, and the MIKE 21 hydrodynamic model was used for building the flood model. Three different horizontal schematizations of the channel—an orthogonal grid, curvilinear grid, and flexible mesh—were used to evaluate the effect of spatial discretization on the results. The research was performed on Javori Brook, a montane stream in the Sumava (Bohemian Forest Mountains, Czech Republic, Central Europe, featuring a fast runoff response to precipitation events and that is located in a core zone of frequent flooding. The studied catchments have been, since 2007, equipped with automated water level gauges and, since 2013, under repeated UAV monitoring. The study revealed the high potential of these data sources for applications in hydrodynamic modeling. In addition to the ultra-high levels of spatial and temporal resolution, the major contribution is in the method’s high operability, enabling the building of highly detailed flood models even in remote areas lacking conventional monitoring. The testing of the data sources and model setup indicated the limitations of the UAV reconstruction of the stream bathymetry, which was completed by the geodetic-grade global navigation satellite system (GNSS measurements. The testing of the different model domain schematizations did not indicate the substantial differences that are typical for conventional low-resolution data, proving the high reliability of the tested modeling workflow.

  13. An Observation Task Chain Representation Model for Disaster Process-Oriented Remote Sensing Satellite Sensor Planning: A Flood Water Monitoring Application

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chao Yang

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available An accurate and comprehensive representation of an observation task is a prerequisite in disaster monitoring to achieve reliable sensor observation planning. However, the extant disaster event or task information models do not fully satisfy the observation requirements for the accurate and efficient planning of remote-sensing satellite sensors. By considering the modeling requirements for a disaster observation task, we propose an observation task chain (OTChain representation model that includes four basic OTChain segments and eight-tuple observation task metadata description structures. A prototype system, namely OTChainManager, is implemented to provide functions for modeling, managing, querying, and visualizing observation tasks. In the case of flood water monitoring, we use a flood remote-sensing satellite sensor observation task for the experiment. The results show that the proposed OTChain representation model can be used in modeling process-owned flood disaster observation tasks. By querying and visualizing the flood observation task instances in the Jinsha River Basin, the proposed model can effectively express observation task processes, represent personalized observation constraints, and plan global remote-sensing satellite sensor observations. Compared with typical observation task information models or engines, the proposed OTChain representation model satisfies the information demands of the OTChain and its processes as well as impels the development of a long time-series sensor observation scheme.

  14. Global Rapid Flood Mapping System with Spaceborne SAR Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yun, S. H.; Owen, S. E.; Hua, H.; Agram, P. S.; Fattahi, H.; Liang, C.; Manipon, G.; Fielding, E. J.; Rosen, P. A.; Webb, F.; Simons, M.

    2017-12-01

    As part of the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) project for Natural Hazards, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and California Institute of Technology, we have developed an automated system that produces derived products for flood extent map generation using spaceborne SAR data. The system takes user's input of area of interest polygons and time window for SAR data search (pre- and post-event). Then the system automatically searches and downloads SAR data, processes them to produce coregistered SAR image pairs, and generates log amplitude ratio images from each pair. Currently the system is automated to support SAR data from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1A/B satellites. We have used the system to produce flood extent maps from Sentinel-1 SAR data for the May 2017 Sri Lanka floods, which killed more than 200 people and displaced about 600,000 people. Our flood extent maps were delivered to the Red Cross to support response efforts. Earlier we also responded to the historic August 2016 Louisiana floods in the United States, which claimed 13 people's lives and caused over $10 billion property damage. For this event, we made synchronized observations from space, air, and ground in close collaboration with USGS and NOAA. The USGS field crews acquired ground observation data, and NOAA acquired high-resolution airborne optical imagery within the time window of +/-2 hours of the SAR data acquisition by JAXA's ALOS-2 satellite. The USGS coordinates of flood water boundaries were used to calibrate our flood extent map derived from the ALOS-2 SAR data, and the map was delivered to FEMA for estimating the number of households affected. Based on the lessons learned from this response effort, we customized the ARIA system automation for rapid flood mapping and developed a mobile friendly web app that can easily be used in the field for data collection. Rapid automatic generation of SAR-based global flood maps calibrated with independent observations from

  15. Flood Monitoring using X-band Dual-polarization Radar Network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chandrasekar, V.; Wang, Y.; Maki, M.; Nakane, K.

    2009-09-01

    A dense weather radar network is an emerging concept advanced by the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA). Using multiple radars observing over a common will create different data outcomes depending on the characteristics of the radar units employed and the network topology. To define this a general framework is developed to describe the radar network space, and formulations are obtained that can be used for weather radar network characterization. Current weather radar surveillance networks are based upon conventional sensing paradigm of widely-separated, standalone sensing systems using long range radars that operate at wavelengths in 5-10 cm range. Such configuration has limited capability to observe close to the surface of the earth because of the earth's curvature but also has poorer resolution at far ranges. The dense network radar system, observes and measures weather phenomenon such as rainfall and severe weather close to the ground at higher spatial and temporal resolution compared to the current paradigm. In addition the dense network paradigm also is easily adaptable to complex terrain. Flooding is one of the most common natural hazards in the world. Especially, excessive development decreases the response time of urban watersheds and complex terrain to rainfall and increases the chance of localized flooding events over a small spatial domain. Successful monitoring of urban floods requires high spatiotemporal resolution, accurate precipitation estimation because of the rapid flood response as well as the complex hydrologic and hydraulic characteristics in an urban environment. This paper reviews various aspects in radar rainfall mapping in urban coverage using dense X-band dual-polarization radar networks. By reducing the maximum range and operating at X-band, one can ensure good azimuthal resolution with a small-size antenna and keep the radar beam closer to the ground. The networked topology helps to achieve satisfactory

  16. Global, Daily, Near Real-Time Satellite-based Flood Monitoring and Product Dissemination

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slayback, D. A.; Policelli, F. S.; Brakenridge, G. R.; Tokay, M. M.; Smith, M. M.; Kettner, A. J.

    2013-12-01

    Flooding is the most destructive, frequent, and costly natural disaster faced by modern society, and is expected to increase in frequency and damage with climate change and population growth. Some of 2013's major floods have impacted the New York City region, the Midwest, Alberta, Australia, various parts of China, Thailand, Pakistan, and central Europe. The toll of these events, in financial costs, displacement of individuals, and deaths, is substantial and continues to rise as climate change generates more extreme weather events. When these events do occur, the disaster management community requires frequently updated and easily accessible information to better understand the extent of flooding and better coordinate response efforts. With funding from NASA's Applied Sciences program, we developed and are now operating a near real-time global flood mapping system to help provide critical flood extent information within 24-48 hours of events. The system applies a water detection algorithm to MODIS imagery received from the LANCE (Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS) system at NASA Goddard within a few hours of satellite overpass. Using imagery from both the Terra (10:30 AM local time overpass) and Aqua (1:30 PM) platforms allows an initial daily assessment of flooding extent by late afternoon, and more robust assessments after accumulating cloud-free imagery over several days. Cloud cover is the primary limitation in detecting surface water from MODIS imagery. Other issues include the relatively coarse scale of the MODIS imagery (250 meters), the difficulty of detecting flood waters in areas with continuous canopy cover, confusion of shadow (cloud or terrain) with water, and accurately identifying detected water as flood as opposed to normal water extents. We have made progress on many of these issues, and are working to develop higher resolution flood detection using alternate sensors, including Landsat and various radar sensors. Although these

  17. Citizen Science into Action - Robust Data with Affordable Technologies for Flood Risks Management in the Himalayas

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pandeya, B.; Uprety, M.; Paul, J. D.; Dugar, S.; Buytaert, W.

    2017-12-01

    With a robust and affordable monitoring system, a wealth of hydrological data can be generated which is fundamental to predict flood risks more accurately. Since the Himalayan region is characterized by data deficiency and unpredictable hydrological behaviour, a locally based participatory monitoring system is a necessity to deal with frequently occurring flooding incidents. A gap in hydrological data is the main bottleneck for establishing any effective flood early warning system. Therefore, an alternative and affordable technical solution can only overcome the situation and support flood risks management activities in the region. In coordination with local people, government authorities and NGOs, we have established a citizen science monitoring system, in which we tested two types of low-cost sensors, ultrasound and LiDAR, in the Karnali river basin of Nepal. The results confirm the robustness of sensor data when compared to conventional radar system based monitoring data. Additionally, our findings also confirmed that the ultrasound sensors are only useful to small rivers whereas the LiDAR sensors are suitable to large river basins with highly variable local climatic conditions. Since the collected sensor data can be directly used in operational flood early warning system in the basin, an opportunity has been created for integrating both affordable technology and citizen science into existing hydrological monitoring practice. Finally, a successful integration could become a testament for upscaling the practice and building flood risk resilient communities in the region.

  18. Flash flood forecasting, warning and risk management: the HYDRATE project

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Borga, M.; Anagnostou, E.N.; Bloeschl, G.; Creutin, J.-D.

    2011-01-01

    Highlights: → We characterize flash flood events in various regions of Europe. → We provide guidance to improve observations and monitoring of flash floods. → Flash floods are associated to orography and are influenced by initial soil moisture conditions. → Models for flash flood forecasting and flash flood hazard assessment are illustrated and discussed. → We examine implications for flood risk policy and discuss recommendations received from end users. - Abstract: The management of flash flood hazards and risks is a critical component of public safety and quality of life. Flash-floods develop at space and time scales that conventional observation systems are not able to monitor for rainfall and river discharge. Consequently, the atmospheric and hydrological generating mechanisms of flash-floods are poorly understood, leading to highly uncertain forecasts of these events. The objective of the HYDRATE project has been to improve the scientific basis of flash flood forecasting by advancing and harmonising a European-wide innovative flash flood observation strategy and developing a coherent set of technologies and tools for effective early warning systems. To this end, the project included actions on the organization of the existing flash flood data patrimony across Europe. The final aim of HYDRATE was to enhance the capability of flash flood forecasting in ungauged basins by exploiting the extended availability of flash flood data and the improved process understanding. This paper provides a review of the work conducted in HYDRATE with a special emphasis on how this body of research can contribute to guide the policy-life cycle concerning flash flood risk management.

  19. Geographic Information and Remotely Sensed Data For The Assessment and Monitoring of The Flood Hazard In Romania

    Science.gov (United States)

    Predescu, C.; Stancalie, G.; Savin, E.

    Floodings represent an important risk in many areas around the globe and especially in Romania. In the latest years floodings occurred quite frequently in Romania, some of which isolated, others were affecting wide areas of the countrySs territory. The paper assumes a modern approach for the flooding risk indices, associated to the physic- geographical, morpho-hydrographical and vulnerability characteristics of a region, in view to establish a methodology which should further allow to determine the flooding risk, using representatives indices at a scale compatible with a synthetic representa- tion of the territory. There are stressed the facilities supplied by the Geographic Infor- mation System (GIS) and the remotely sensed data to manage flooding during their characteristic phases: before, during and after flooding. Accent is laid on the pre and post-crisis phases. An important research topic was the study of the parameters that can be extracted from satellite images in view of organising a hierarchy of the geo- graphical space versus the flooding risk. Information obtained from satellite images proved to be useful for the determination of certain parameters necessary to monitor flooding: hydrographic network, water accumulation, size of floodable surface, land impermeability degree, water absorption capacity over the basin surface, resilience to in-soil water infiltration. The study encompassed both the risk degree levels related with various parameters, which condition and determine floodings, and the one, which takes into consideration the human presence in the sensitive areas. It was planned to design and build a database, which will help to elaborate the flooding hydrological risk indices. The application was developed for the Arges hydrographic basin in Romania, a critical area, keeping in mind that it withholds many localities, including the capital and also important economic centres. The database allows obtaining synthetic repre- sentations of the

  20. Spatiotemporal hazard mapping of a flood event "migration" in a transboundary river basin as an operational tool in flood risk management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perrou, Theodora; Papastergios, Asterios; Parcharidis, Issaak; Chini, Marco

    2017-10-01

    Flood disaster is one of the heaviest disasters in the world. It is necessary to monitor and evaluate the flood disaster in order to mitigate the consequences. As floods do not recognize borders, transboundary flood risk management is imperative in shared river basins. Disaster management is highly dependent on early information and requires data from the whole river basin. Based on the hypothesis that the flood events over the same area with same magnitude have almost identical evolution, it is crucial to develop a repository database of historical flood events. This tool, in the case of extended transboundary river basins, could constitute an operational warning system for the downstream area. The utility of SAR images for flood mapping, was demonstrated by previous studies but the SAR systems in orbit were not characterized by high operational capacity. Copernicus system will fill this gap in operational service for risk management, especially during emergency phase. The operational capabilities have been significantly improved by newly available satellite constellation, such as the Sentinel-1A AB mission, which is able to provide systematic acquisitions with a very high temporal resolution in a wide swath coverage. The present study deals with the monitoring of a transboundary flood event in Evros basin. The objective of the study is to create the "migration story" of the flooded areas on the basis of the evolution in time for the event occurred from October 2014 till May 2015. Flood hazard maps will be created, using SAR-based semi-automatic algorithms and then through the synthesis of the related maps in a GIS-system, a spatiotemporal thematic map of the event will be produced. The thematic map combined with TanDEM-X DEM, 12m/pixel spatial resolution, will define the non- affected areas which is a very useful information for the emergency planning and emergency response phases. The Sentinels meet the main requirements to be an effective and suitable

  1. Droughts and floods monitoring in Poland with SMOS, SEVIRI and model data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kotarba, A. Z.; Stankiewicz, K.; Słomiński, J.; Słomińska, E.; Marczewski, W.

    2012-04-01

    Droughts and floods represent the extreme cases of hydrological regime. Both significantly influence ecological processes in the environment as well as socio-economic situation of human activity. Measurements of soil moisture and rainfall is being recognized as fundamental for droughts and floods monitoring. We used Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) L2 soil moisture data and Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) rain rate approximation to evaluate the intensity and extend of droughts/floods events in Poland in 2010 and 2011. SEVIRI Multi-Sensor Precipitation Estimate rain rates were used for calculation of monthly rain accumulation (24 SEVIRI L2 datasets per day), then projected to match SMOS spatial reference. Based on SEVIRI data, monthly sum of precipitation was estimated for each SMOS DGG cell within area of interest (the ROI covers Poland and the closest neighborhood). At the DGG level, SMOS SM and SEVIRI precipitation data were compared for each month since May 2010. Nearly two year series provided a background for droughts and floods events. Final L3 products of SMOS SM and SEVIRI precipitation were compared with operational, traditionally-developed drought risk maps, in order to evaluate the degree of agreement between remotely sensed products and models calculated with surface-based measurements only.

  2. Near-Bed Monitoring of Suspended Sediment during a Major Flood Event Highlights Deficiencies in Existing Event-Loading Estimates

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alistair Grinham

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Rates of fluvial sediment discharge are notoriously difficult to quantify, particularly during major flood events. Measurements are typically undertaken using event stations requiring large capital investment, and the high cost tends to reduce the spatial coverage of monitoring sites. This study aimed to characterise the near-bed suspended sediment dynamics during a major flood event using a low-cost approach. Monitoring nodes consisted of a total suspended sediment (TSS logger, a single stage sampler, and a time-lapse camera for a total cost of less than US$420. Seven nodes were deployed across an elevation gradient on the stream bank of Laidley Creek, Queensland, Australia, and two of these nodes successfully characterised the near-bed suspended sediment dynamics across a major flood event. Near-bed TSS concentrations were closely related to stream flow, with the contribution of suspended bed material dominating the total suspended load during peak flows. Observed TSS concentrations were orders of magnitude higher than historical monitoring data for this site collected using the State government event station. This difference was attributed to the event station pump inlet screening the suspended bed material prior to sample collection. The ‘first flush’ phenomenon was detected and attributed to a local resuspension of muddy crusts immediately upstream of the study site. This low-cost approach will provide an important addition to the existing monitoring of fluvial sediment discharge during flood events.

  3. Flood forecasting and early warning system for Dungun River Basin

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hafiz, I; Sidek, L M; Basri, H; Fukami, K; Hanapi, M N; Livia, L; Nor, M D

    2013-01-01

    Floods can bring such disasters to the affected dweller due to loss of properties, crops and even deaths. The damages to properties and crops by the severe flooding are occurred due to the increase in the economic value of the properties as well as the extent of the flood. Flood forecasting and warning system is one of the examples of the non-structural measures which can give early warning to the affected people. People who live near the flood-prone areas will be warned so that they can evacuate themselves and their belongings before the arrival of the flood. This can considerably reduce flood loss and damage and above all, the loss of human lives. Integrated Flood Analysis System (IFAS) model is a runoff analysis model converting rainfall into runoff for a given river basin. The simulation can be done using either ground or satellite-based rainfall to produce calculated discharge within the river. The calculated discharge is used to generate the flood inundation map within the catchment area for the selected flood event using Infowork RS.

  4. System of prediction and warning of floods in the water basin of Struma/ Strymonas River

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mimides, Theologos; Rizos, Spyros; Soulis, Kostas; Dimitrov, Dobri

    2004-01-01

    Struma is collecting waters from four countries: Bulgaria, Serbia, FYROM and Greece. Most of its basin area is located in Bulgaria and Greece, while the upper part of its basin is in Bulgaria. There are important hydro technical structures just below the Bulgarian-Greek border, and the floods generated in the Bulgarian part of the basin could significantly affect the security of those structures and their operational rules. That is why several years ago a project related to flood warning at Struma/ Strymonas river basin was formulated and its first phase was completed in 2000. The main objective of the project was to demonstrate the principal possibility for issuing reliable warnings for hazardous flood events with sufficient lead-time to organize flood mitigation measures. The project implementation team included various scientists from the Agricultural University of Athens-Greece (leader), from the Center of Remote Sensing, Bristol University-UK, and from the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology of Sofia - Bulgaria. The work program of the first project phase included a range of activities implemented by the Bulgarian and Greek team members, coordinated by the Agricultural University of Athens. Among the activities of the Project are included: a) a preliminary model for peak flood hydrographs and specifications of an early warning system, b) a real time flood forecasting by routing flood hydrographs through the system of the river and Kerkini lake, c) thematic maps of vegetation and land cover derived by satellite remote sensing, d) satellite snow monitoring in the basin, e) an adaptation of the Alladin Weather Forecast Model at the hydrological basin and scaling of the Crocus Snow Model at a preliminary stage, and f) development of a geo environmental recording system.(Author)

  5. Monitoring Inland Storm Surge and Flooding from Hurricane Rita

    Science.gov (United States)

    McGee, Benton D.; Tollett, Roland W.; Mason, Jr., Robert R.

    2006-01-01

    Pressure transducers (sensors) and high-water marks were used to document the inland water levels related to storm surge generated by Hurricane Rita in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. On September 22-23, 2005, an experimental monitoring network of sensors was deployed at 33 sites over an area of about 4,000 square miles to record the timing, extent, and magnitude of inland hurricane storm surge and coastal flooding. Sensors were programmed to record date and time, temperature, and barometric or water pressure. Water pressure was corrected for changes in barometric pressure and salinity. Elevation surveys using global-positioning systems and differential levels were used to relate all storm-surge water-level data, reference marks, benchmarks, sensor measuring points, and high-water marks to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). The resulting data indicated that storm-surge water levels over 14 feet above NAVD 88 occurred at three locations, and rates of water-level rise greater than 5 feet per hour occurred at three locations near the Louisiana coast.

  6. Flood Forecasting in River System Using ANFIS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ullah, Nazrin; Choudhury, P.

    2010-01-01

    The aim of the present study is to investigate applicability of artificial intelligence techniques such as ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System) in forecasting flood flow in a river system. The proposed technique combines the learning ability of neural network with the transparent linguistic representation of fuzzy system. The technique is applied to forecast discharge at a downstream station using flow information at various upstream stations. A total of three years data has been selected for the implementation of this model. ANFIS models with various input structures and membership functions are constructed, trained and tested to evaluate efficiency of the models. Statistical indices such as Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Correlation Coefficient (CORR) and Coefficient of Efficiency (CE) are used to evaluate performance of the ANFIS models in forecasting river flood. The values of the indices show that ANFIS model can accurately and reliably be used to forecast flood in a river system.

  7. Flood Response System—A Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yogesh Kumar Singh

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Flood Response System (FRS is a network-enabled solution developed using open-source software. The system has query based flood damage assessment modules with outputs in the form of spatial maps and statistical databases. FRS effectively facilitates the management of post-disaster activities caused due to flood, like displaying spatial maps of area affected, inundated roads, etc., and maintains a steady flow of information at all levels with different access rights depending upon the criticality of the information. It is designed to facilitate users in managing information related to flooding during critical flood seasons and analyzing the extent of damage. The inputs to FRS are provided using two components: (1 a semi-automated application developed indigenously, to delineate inundated areas for Near-Real Time Flood Monitoring using Active Microwave Remote Sensing data and (2 a two-dimensional (2D hydrodynamic river model generated outputs for water depth and velocity in flooded areas for an embankment breach scenario. The 2D Hydrodynamic model, CCHE2D (Center for Computational Hydroscience and Engineering Two-Dimensional model, was used to simulate an area of 600 km2 in the flood-prone zone of the Brahmaputra basin. The resultant inundated area from the model was found to be 85% accurate when validated with post-flood optical satellite data.

  8. Prediction of flood abnormalities for improved public safety using a modified adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aqil, M; Kita, I; Yano, A; Nishiyama, S

    2006-01-01

    It is widely accepted that an efficient flood alarm system may significantly improve public safety and mitigate economical damages caused by inundations. In this paper, a modified adaptive neuro-fuzzy system is proposed to modify the traditional neuro-fuzzy model. This new method employs a rule-correction based algorithm to replace the error back propagation algorithm that is employed by the traditional neuro-fuzzy method in backward pass calculation. The final value obtained during the backward pass calculation using the rule-correction algorithm is then considered as a mapping function of the learning mechanism of the modified neuro-fuzzy system. Effectiveness of the proposed identification technique is demonstrated through a simulation study on the flood series of the Citarum River in Indonesia. The first four-year data (1987 to 1990) was used for model training/calibration, while the other remaining data (1991 to 2002) was used for testing the model. The number of antecedent flows that should be included in the input variables was determined by two statistical methods, i.e. autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation between the variables. Performance accuracy of the model was evaluated in terms of two statistical indices, i.e. mean average percentage error and root mean square error. The algorithm was developed in a decision support system environment in order to enable users to process the data. The decision support system is found to be useful due to its interactive nature, flexibility in approach, and evolving graphical features, and can be adopted for any similar situation to predict the streamflow. The main data processing includes gauging station selection, input generation, lead-time selection/generation, and length of prediction. This program enables users to process the flood data, to train/test the model using various input options, and to visualize results. The program code consists of a set of files, which can be modified as well to match other

  9. Landslide and Flood Warning System Prototypes based on Wireless Sensor Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hloupis, George; Stavrakas, Ilias; Triantis, Dimos

    2010-05-01

    Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are one of the emerging areas that received great attention during the last few years. This is mainly due to the fact that WSNs have provided scientists with the capability of developing real-time monitoring systems equipped with sensors based on Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). WSNs have great potential for many applications in environmental monitoring since the sensor nodes that comprised from can host several MEMS sensors (such as temperature, humidity, inertial, pressure, strain-gauge) and transducers (such as position, velocity, acceleration, vibration). The resulting devices are small and inexpensive but with limited memory and computing resources. Each sensor node contains a sensing module which along with an RF transceiver. The communication is broadcast-based since the network topology can change rapidly due to node failures [1]. Sensor nodes can transmit their measurements to central servers through gateway nodes without any processing or they make preliminary calculations locally in order to produce results that will be sent to central servers [2]. Based on the above characteristics, two prototypes using WSNs are presented in this paper: A Landslide detection system and a Flood warning system. Both systems sent their data to central processing server where the core of processing routines exists. Transmission is made using Zigbee and IEEE 802.11b protocol but is capable to use VSAT communication also. Landslide detection system uses structured network topology. Each measuring node comprises of a columnar module that is half buried to the area under investigation. Each sensing module contains a geophone, an inclinometer and a set of strain gauges. Data transmitted to central processing server where possible landslide evolution is monitored. Flood detection system uses unstructured network topology since the failure rate of sensor nodes is expected higher. Each sensing module contains a custom water level sensor

  10. Representing Geospatial Environment Observation Capability Information: A Case Study of Managing Flood Monitoring Sensors in the Jinsha River Basin

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hu, Chuli; Guan, Qingfeng; Li, Jie; Wang, Ke; Chen, Nengcheng

    2016-01-01

    Sensor inquirers cannot understand comprehensive or accurate observation capability information because current observation capability modeling does not consider the union of multiple sensors nor the effect of geospatial environmental features on the observation capability of sensors. These limitations result in a failure to discover credible sensors or plan for their collaboration for environmental monitoring. The Geospatial Environmental Observation Capability (GEOC) is proposed in this study and can be used as an information basis for the reliable discovery and collaborative planning of multiple environmental sensors. A field-based GEOC (GEOCF) information representation model is built. Quintuple GEOCF feature components and two GEOCF operations are formulated based on the geospatial field conceptual framework. The proposed GEOCF markup language is used to formalize the proposed GEOCF. A prototype system called GEOCapabilityManager is developed, and a case study is conducted for flood observation in the lower reaches of the Jinsha River Basin. The applicability of the GEOCF is verified through the reliable discovery of flood monitoring sensors and planning for the collaboration of these sensors. PMID:27999247

  11. Monitoring of the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of the Floods in the Guayas Watershed (Ecuadorian Pacific Coast Using Global Monitoring ENVISAT ASAR Images and Rainfall Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Frédéric Frappart

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The floods are an annual phenomenon on the Pacific Coast of Ecuador and can become devastating during El Niño years, especially in the Guayas watershed (32,300 km2, the largest drainage basin of the South American western side of the Andes. As limited information on flood extent in this basin is available, this study presents a monitoring of the spatio-temporal dynamics of floods in the Guayas Basin, between 2005 and 2008, using a change detection method applied to ENVISAT ASAR Global Monitoring SAR images acquired at a spatial resolution of 1 km. The method is composed of three steps. First, a supervised classification was performed to identify pixels of open water present in the Guayas Basin. Then, the separability of their radar signature from signatures of other classes was determined during the four dry seasons from 2005 to 2008. In the end, standardized anomalies of backscattering coefficient were computed during the four wet seasons of the study period to detect changes between dry and wet seasons. Different thresholds were tested to identify the flooded areas in the watershed using external information from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory. A value of −2.30 ± 0.05 was found suitable to estimate the number of inundated pixels and limit the number of false detection (below 10%. Using this threshold, monthly maps of inundation were estimated during the wet season (December to May from 2004 to 2008. The most frequently inundated areas were found to be located along the Babahoyo River, a tributary in the east of the basin. Large interannual variability in the flood extent is observed at the flood peak (from 50 to 580 km2, consistent with the rainfall in the Guayas watershed during the study period.

  12. The Namibia Early Flood Warning System, A CEOS Pilot Project

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mandl, Daniel; Frye, Stuart; Cappelaere, Pat; Sohlberg, Robert; Handy, Matthew; Grossman, Robert

    2012-01-01

    Over the past year few years, an international collaboration has developed a pilot project under the auspices of Committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS) Disasters team. The overall team consists of civilian satellite agencies. For this pilot effort, the development team consists of NASA, Canadian Space Agency, Univ. of Maryland, Univ. of Colorado, Univ. of Oklahoma, Ukraine Space Research Institute and Joint Research Center(JRC) for European Commission. This development team collaborates with regional , national and international agencies to deliver end-to-end disaster coverage. In particular, the team in collaborating on this effort with the Namibia Department of Hydrology to begin in Namibia . However, the ultimate goal is to expand the functionality to provide early warning over the South Africa region. The initial collaboration was initiated by United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs and CEOS Working Group for Information Systems and Services (WGISS). The initial driver was to demonstrate international interoperability using various space agency sensors and models along with regional in-situ ground sensors. In 2010, the team created a preliminary semi-manual system to demonstrate moving and combining key data streams and delivering the data to the Namibia Department of Hydrology during their flood season which typically is January through April. In this pilot, a variety of moderate resolution and high resolution satellite flood imagery was rapidly delivered and used in conjunction with flood predictive models in Namibia. This was collected in conjunction with ground measurements and was used to examine how to create a customized flood early warning system. During the first year, the team made use of SensorWeb technology to gather various sensor data which was used to monitor flood waves traveling down basins originating in Angola, but eventually flooding villages in Namibia. The team made use of standardized interfaces such as those articulated

  13. Development of an intelligent hydroinformatic system for real-time monitoring and assessment of civil infrastructure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cahill, Paul; Michalis, Panagiotis; Solman, Hrvoje; Kerin, Igor; Bekic, Damir; Pakrashi, Vikram; McKeogh, Eamon

    2017-04-01

    With the effects of climate change becoming more apparent, extreme weather events are now occurring with greater frequency throughout the world. Such extreme events have resulted in increased high intensity flood events which are having devastating consequences on hydro-structures, especially on bridge infrastructure. The remote and often inaccessible nature of such bridges makes inspections problematic, a major concern if safety assessments are required during and after extreme flood events. A solution to this is the introduction of smart, low cost sensing solutions at locations susceptible to hydro-hazards. Such solutions can provide real-time information on the health of the bridge and its environments, with such information aiding in the mitigation of the risks associated with extreme weather events. This study presents the development of an intelligent system for remote, real-time monitoring of hydro-hazards to bridge infrastructure. The solution consists of two types of remote monitoring stations which have the capacity to monitor environmental conditions and provide real-time information to a centralized, big data database solution, from which an intelligent decision support system will accommodate the results to control and manage bridge, river and catchment assets. The first device developed as part of the system is the Weather Information Logging Device (WILD), which monitors rainfall, temperature and air and soil moisture content. The ability of the WILD to monitor rainfall in real time enables flood early warning alerts and predictive river flow conditions, thereby enabling decision makers the ability to make timely and effective decisions about critical infrastructures in advance of extreme flood events. The WILD is complemented by a second monitoring device, the Bridge Information Recording Device (BIRD), which monitors water levels at a given location in real-time. The monitoring of water levels of a river allows for, among other applications

  14. Using satellite images to monitor glacial-lake outburst floods: Lago Cachet Dos drainage, Chile

    Science.gov (United States)

    Friesen, Beverly A.; Cole, Christopher J.; Nimick, David A.; Wilson, Earl M.; Fahey, Mark J.; McGrath, Daniel J.; Leidich, Jonathan

    2015-01-01

    The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is monitoring and analyzing glacial-lake outburst floods (GLOFs) in the Colonia valley in the Patagonia region of southern Chile. A GLOF is a type of flood that occurs when water impounded by a glacier or a glacial moraine is released catastrophically. In the Colonia valley, GLOFs originating from Lago Cachet Dos, which is dammed by the Colonia Glacier, have recurred periodically since 2008. The water discharged during these GLOFs flows under or through the Colonia Glacier, into Lago Colonia and then the Río Colonia, and finally into the Río Baker—Chile's largest river in terms of volume of water.

  15. Signal Processing Methods for Flood Early Warning Systems

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pyayt, A.L.; Mokhov, I.I.; Kozionov, A.P.; Kusherbaeva, V.T.; Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Broekhuijsen, B.J.; Meijer, R.J.; Hinkelmann, R.; Nasermoaddeli, M.H.; Liong, S.Y.; Savic, D.; Fröhle, P.; Daemrich, K.F.

    2012-01-01

    We present in a data-driven approach for detection of anomalies in earthen dam (dike) behaviour that can indicate the onset of flood defence structure failure. This approach is implemented in the UrbanFlood early warning system's Artificial Intelligence component that processes dike measurements in

  16. Dynamics of flood water infiltration and ground water recharge in hyperarid desert.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dahan, Ofer; Tatarsky, Boaz; Enzel, Yehouda; Kulls, Christoph; Seely, Mary; Benito, Gererdo

    2008-01-01

    A study on flood water infiltration and ground water recharge of a shallow alluvial aquifer was conducted in the hyperarid section of the Kuiseb River, Namibia. The study site was selected to represent a typical desert ephemeral river. An instrumental setup allowed, for the first time, continuous monitoring of infiltration during a flood event through the channel bed and the entire vadose zone. The monitoring system included flexible time domain reflectometry probes that were designed to measure the temporal variation in vadose zone water content and instruments to concurrently measure the levels of flood and ground water. A sequence of five individual floods was monitored during the rainy season in early summer 2006. These newly generated data served to elucidate the dynamics of flood water infiltration. Each flood initiated an infiltration event which was expressed in wetting of the vadose zone followed by a measurable rise in the water table. The data enabled a direct calculation of the infiltration fluxes by various independent methods. The floods varied in their stages, peaks, and initial water contents. However, all floods produced very similar flux rates, suggesting that the recharge rates are less affected by the flood stages but rather controlled by flow duration and available aquifer storage under it. Large floods flood the stream channel terraces and promote the larger transmission losses. These, however, make only a negligible contribution to the recharge of the ground water. It is the flood duration within the active streambed, which may increase with flood magnitude that is important to the recharge process.

  17. Radar-based Flood Warning System for Houston, Texas and Its Performance Evaluation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fang, N.; Bedient, P.

    2009-12-01

    Houston has a long history of flooding problems as a serious nature. For instance, Houstonians suffered from severe flood inundation during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. Radar-based flood warning systems as non-structural tools to provide accurate and timely warnings to the public and private entities are greatly needed for urban areas prone to flash floods. Fortunately, the advent of GIS, radar-based rainfall estimation using NEXRAD, and real-time delivery systems on the internet have allowed flood alert systems to provide important advanced warning of impending flood conditions. Thus, emergency personnel can take proper steps to mitigate against catastrophic losses. The Rice and Texas Medical Center (TMC) Flood Alert System (FAS2) has been delivering warning information with 2 to 3 hours of lead time to facility personnel in a readily understood format for more than 40 events since 1997. The system performed well during these major rainfall events with R square value of 93%. The current system has been improved by incorporating a new hydraulic prediction tool - FloodPlain Map Library (FPML). The FPML module aims to provide visualized information such as floodplain maps and water surface elevations instead of just showing hydrographs in real time based on NEXRAD radar rainfall data. During Hurricane Ike (September, 2008), FAS2 successfully provided precise and timely flood warning information to TMC with the peak flow difference of 3.6% and the volume difference of 5.6%; timing was excellent for this double-peaked event. With the funding from the Texas Department of Transportation, a similar flood warning system has been developed at a critical transportation pass along Highway 288 in Houston, Texas. In order to enable emergency personnel to begin flood preparation with as much lead time as possible, FAS2 is being used as a prototype to develop warning system for other flood-prone areas such as City of Sugar Land.

  18. An Assessment of Capacity, Gaps and Opportunities toward Building a Global Early Warning System for Flood Disasters

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hong, Y.; Adler, R.; Huffman, G.

    2007-12-01

    Many governmental emergency management agencies or non-governmental organizations need real-time information on emerging disasters for preparedness and response. However, progress in warnings for hydrologic disasters has been constrained by the difficulty of measuring spatiotemporal variability of rainfall fluxes continuously over space and time, due largely to insufficient ground monitoring networks, long delay in data transmission and absence of data sharing protocols among many geopolitically trans-boundary basins. In addition, in-situ gauging stations are often washed away by the very floods they are designed to monitor, making reconstruction of gauges a common post-flood activity around the world. In reality, remote sensing precipitation estimates may be the only source of rainfall information available over much of the globe, particularly for vulnerable countries in the tropics where abundant extreme rain storms and severe flooding events repeat every year. Building on progress in remote sensing technology, researchers have improved the accuracy, coverage, and resolution of rainfall estimates by combining imagery from infrared, passive microwave, and weather radar sensors. Today, remote sensing imagery acquired and processed in real time can provide near-real-time rainfall fluxes at relatively fine spatiotemporal scales (kilometers to tens of kilometers and 30-minute to 3-hour). These new suites of rainfall products have the potential to support daily decision-making in analysis of hydrologic hazards. This talk will address several key issues, including remote sensing rainfall retrieval and data assimilation, for hydrologists to develop alternative satellite-based flood warning systems that may supplement in-situ infrastructure when conventional data sources are denied due to natural or administrative causes. This talk will also assess a module-structure global flood prediction system that has been running at real-time by integrating remote sensing forcing

  19. Prospects for development of unified global flood observation and prediction systems (Invited)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lettenmaier, D. P.

    2013-12-01

    Floods are among the most damaging of natural hazards, with global flood losses in 2011 alone estimated to have exceeded $100B. Historically, flood economic damages have been highest in the developed world (due in part to encroachment on historical flood plains), but loss of life, and human impacts have been greatest in the developing world. However, as the 2011 Thailand floods show, industrializing countries, many of which do not have well developed flood protection systems, are increasingly vulnerable to economic damages as they become more industrialized. At present, unified global flood observation and prediction systems are in their infancy; notwithstanding that global weather forecasting is a mature field. The summary for this session identifies two evolving capabilities that hold promise for development of more sophisticated global flood forecast systems: global hydrologic models and satellite remote sensing (primarily of precipitation, but also of flood inundation). To this I would add the increasing sophistication and accuracy of global precipitation analysis (and forecast) fields from numerical weather prediction models. In this brief overview, I will review progress in all three areas, and especially the evolution of hydrologic data assimilation which integrates modeling and data sources. I will also comment on inter-governmental and inter-agency cooperation, and related issues that have impeded progress in the development and utilization of global flood observation and prediction systems.

  20. Field Testing of Energy-Efficient Flood-Damage-Resistant Residential Envelope Systems Summary Report

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Aglan, H.

    2005-08-04

    The primary purpose of the project was to identify materials and methods that will make the envelope of a house flood damage resistant. Flood damage resistant materials and systems are intended to be used to repair houses subsequent to flooding. This project was also intended to develop methods of restoring the envelopes of houses that have been flooded but are repairable and may be subject to future flooding. Then if the house floods again, damage will not be as extensive as in previous flood events and restoration costs and efforts will be minimized. The purpose of the first pair of field tests was to establish a baseline for typical current residential construction practice. The first test modules used materials and systems that were commonly found in residential envelopes throughout the U.S. The purpose of the second pair of field tests was to begin evaluating potential residential envelope materials and systems that were projected to be more flood-damage resistant and restorable than the conventional materials and systems tested in the first pair of tests. The purpose of testing the third slab-on-grade module was to attempt to dry flood proof the module (no floodwater within the structure). If the module could be sealed well enough to prevent water from entering, then this would be an effective method of making the interior materials and systems flood damage resistant. The third crawl space module was tested in the same manner as the previous modules and provided an opportunity to do flood tests of additional residential materials and systems. Another purpose of the project was to develop the methodology to collect representative, measured, reproducible (i.e. scientific) data on how various residential materials and systems respond to flooding conditions so that future recommendations for repairing flood damaged houses could be based on scientific data. An additional benefit of collecting this data is that it will be used in the development of a standard test

  1. Flood Damage and Loss Estimation for Iowa on Web-based Systems using HAZUS

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yildirim, E.; Sermet, M. Y.; Demir, I.

    2016-12-01

    Importance of decision support systems for flood emergency response and loss estimation increases with its social and economic impacts. To estimate the damage of the flood, there are several software systems available to researchers and decision makers. HAZUS-MH is one of the most widely used desktop program, developed by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), to estimate economic loss and social impacts of disasters such as earthquake, hurricane and flooding (riverine and coastal). HAZUS used loss estimation methodology and implements through geographic information system (GIS). HAZUS contains structural, demographic, and vehicle information across United States. Thus, it allows decision makers to understand and predict possible casualties and damage of the floods by running flood simulations through GIS application. However, it doesn't represent real time conditions because of using static data. To close this gap, an overview of a web-based infrastructure coupling HAZUS and real time data provided by IFIS (Iowa Flood Information System) is presented by this research. IFIS is developed by the Iowa Flood Center, and a one-stop web-platform to access community-based flood conditions, forecasts, visualizations, inundation maps and flood-related data, information, and applications. Large volume of real-time observational data from a variety of sensors and remote sensing resources (radars, rain gauges, stream sensors, etc.) and flood inundation models are staged on a user-friendly maps environment that is accessible to the general public. Providing cross sectional analyses between HAZUS-MH and IFIS datasets, emergency managers are able to evaluate flood damage during flood events easier and more accessible in real time conditions. With matching data from HAZUS-MH census tract layer and IFC gauges, economical effects of flooding can be observed and evaluated by decision makers. The system will also provide visualization of the data by using augmented reality for

  2. A dimension reduction method for flood compensation operation of multi-reservoir system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jia, B.; Wu, S.; Fan, Z.

    2017-12-01

    Multiple reservoirs cooperation compensation operations coping with uncontrolled flood play vital role in real-time flood mitigation. This paper come up with a reservoir flood compensation operation index (ResFCOI), which formed by elements of flood control storage, flood inflow volume, flood transmission time and cooperation operations period, then establish a flood cooperation compensation operations model of multi-reservoir system, according to the ResFCOI to determine a computational order of each reservoir, and lastly the differential evolution algorithm is implemented for computing single reservoir flood compensation optimization in turn, so that a dimension reduction method is formed to reduce computational complexity. Shiguan River Basin with two large reservoirs and an extensive uncontrolled flood area, is used as a case study, results show that (a) reservoirs' flood discharges and the uncontrolled flood are superimposed at Jiangjiaji Station, while the formed flood peak flow is as small as possible; (b) cooperation compensation operations slightly increase in usage of flood storage capacity in reservoirs, when comparing to rule-based operations; (c) it takes 50 seconds in average when computing a cooperation compensation operations scheme. The dimension reduction method to guide flood compensation operations of multi-reservoir system, can make each reservoir adjust its flood discharge strategy dynamically according to the uncontrolled flood magnitude and pattern, so as to mitigate the downstream flood disaster.

  3. Regional early flood warning system: design and implementation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, L. C.; Yang, S. N.; Kuo, C. L.; Wang, Y. F.

    2017-12-01

    This study proposes a prototype of the regional early flood inundation warning system in Tainan City, Taiwan. The AI technology is used to forecast multi-step-ahead regional flood inundation maps during storm events. The computing time is only few seconds that leads to real-time regional flood inundation forecasting. A database is built to organize data and information for building real-time forecasting models, maintaining the relations of forecasted points, and displaying forecasted results, while real-time data acquisition is another key task where the model requires immediately accessing rain gauge information to provide forecast services. All programs related database are constructed in Microsoft SQL Server by using Visual C# to extracting real-time hydrological data, managing data, storing the forecasted data and providing the information to the visual map-based display. The regional early flood inundation warning system use the up-to-date Web technologies driven by the database and real-time data acquisition to display the on-line forecasting flood inundation depths in the study area. The friendly interface includes on-line sequentially showing inundation area by Google Map, maximum inundation depth and its location, and providing KMZ file download of the results which can be watched on Google Earth. The developed system can provide all the relevant information and on-line forecast results that helps city authorities to make decisions during typhoon events and make actions to mitigate the losses.

  4. A Location Intelligence System for the Assessment of Pluvial Flooding Risk and the Identification of Storm Water Pollutant Sources from Roads in Suburbanised Areas

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Szymon Szewrański

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available The interplay of an ever-growing number of inhabitants, sprawl development, soil sealing, changes in urban traffic characteristics, as well as observed climate trends gives rise to more frequent pluvial flooding in cities, a higher run-off of water, and an increasing pollution of surface water. The aim of this research is to develop a location intelligence system for the assessment of pluvial flooding risks and the identification of storm water pollutant sources from roads in newly-developed areas. The system combines geographic information systems and business intelligence software, and it is based on the original Pluvial Flood Risk Assessment tool. The location intelligence system effectively identifies the spatial and temporal distribution of pluvial flood risks, allows to preliminarily evaluate the total run-off from roads, and helps localise potential places for new water management infrastructure. Further improvements concern the modelling of a flow accumulation and drainage system, the application of weather radar precipitation data, and traffic monitoring and modelling.

  5. Flood mapping with multitemporal MODIS data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Son, Nguyen-Thanh; Chen, Chi-Farn; Chen, Cheng-Ru

    2014-05-01

    Flood is one of the most devastating and frequent disasters resulting in loss of human life and serve damage to infrastructure and agricultural production. Flood is phenomenal in the Mekong River Delta (MRD), Vietnam. It annually lasts from July to November. Information on spatiotemporal flood dynamics is thus important for planners to devise successful strategies for flood monitoring and mitigation of its negative effects. The main objective of this study is to develop an approach for weekly mapping flood dynamics with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer data in MRD using the water fraction model (WFM). The data processed for 2009 comprises three main steps: (1) data pre-processing to construct smooth time series of the difference in the values (DVLE) between land surface water index (LSWI) and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) using the empirical mode decomposition (EMD), (2) flood derivation using WFM, and (3) accuracy assessment. The mapping results were compared with the ground reference data, which were constructed from Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data. As several error sources, including mixed-pixel problems and low-resolution bias between the mapping results and ground reference data, could lower the level of classification accuracy, the comparisons indicated satisfactory results with the overall accuracy of 80.5% and Kappa coefficient of 0.61, respectively. These results were reaffirmed by a close correlation between the MODIS-derived flood area and that of the ground reference map at the provincial level, with the correlation coefficients (R2) of 0.93. Considering the importance of remote sensing for monitoring floods and mitigating the damage caused by floods to crops and infrastructure, this study eventually leads to the realization of the value of using time-series MODIS DVLE data for weekly flood monitoring in MRD with the aid of EMD and WFM. Such an approach that could provide quantitative information on

  6. Utilizing NASA Earth Observations to Enhance Flood Impact Products and Mitigation in the Lower Mekong Water Basin

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doyle, C.; Gao, M.; Spruce, J.; Bolten, J. D.; Weber, S.

    2014-12-01

    This presentation discusses results of a project to develop a near real time flood monitoring capability for the Lower Mekong Water Basin (LMB), the largest river basin in Southeast Asia and home to more than sixty million people. The region has seen rapid population growth and socio-economic development, fueling unsustainable deforestation, agricultural expansion, and stream-flow regulation. The basin supports substantial rice farming and other agrarian activities, which heavily depend upon seasonal flooding. But, floods due to typhoons and other severe weather events can result in disasters that cost millions of dollars and cause hardships to millions of people. This study uses near real time and historical Aqua and Terra MODIS 250-m resolution Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) products to map flood and drought impact within the LMB. In doing so, NDVI change products are derived by comparing from NDVI during the wet season to a baseline NDVI from the dry season. The method records flood events, which cause drastic decreases in NDVI compared to non-flooded conditions. NDVI change product computation was automated for updating a near real-time system, as part of the Committee on Earth Observing Satellites Disaster Risk Management Observation Strategy. The system is a web-based 'Flood Dashboard that will showcase MODIS flood monitoring products, along with other flood mapping and weather data products. This flood dashboard enables end-users to view and assess a variety of geospatial data to monitor floods and flood impacts in near real-time, as well provides a platform for further data aggregation for flood prediction modeling and post-event assessment.

  7. Evaluation of the wind pumped hydropower storage integrated flood mitigation system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Safi, Aishah; Basrawi, Firdaus

    2018-04-01

    As Wind Pumped Hydropower Storage (WPHS) need high cost to construct, it is important to study their impacts on economic and environmental aspects. Thus, this research aims to evaluate their economic and environmental performances. First, Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) was used to simulate power generation system with and without the flood reservoir. Next, the total amount of emitted air pollutant was used to evaluate the environmental impacts. It was found the wind-diesel with reservoir storage system (A-III) will have much lower NPC than other systems that do not include reservoir for flood mitigation when the cost of flood losses are included in the total Net Present Cost (NPC). The NPC for system A-III was RM 1.52 million and for diesel standalone system (A-I) is RM 10.8 million when the cost of flood losses are included in the total NPC. Between both energy systems, the amount of pollutants emitted by the A-III system was only 408 kg-CO2/year which is much less than the A-I system which is 99, 754 kg of carbon dioxide per year. To conclude, the WPHS integrated with flood mitigation system seems promising in the aspects of economic and environment.

  8. Flood forecasting within urban drainage systems using NARX neural network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abou Rjeily, Yves; Abbas, Oras; Sadek, Marwan; Shahrour, Isam; Hage Chehade, Fadi

    2017-11-01

    Urbanization activity and climate change increase the runoff volumes, and consequently the surcharge of the urban drainage systems (UDS). In addition, age and structural failures of these utilities limit their capacities, and thus generate hydraulic operation shortages, leading to flooding events. The large increase in floods within urban areas requires rapid actions from the UDS operators. The proactivity in taking the appropriate actions is a key element in applying efficient management and flood mitigation. Therefore, this work focuses on developing a flooding forecast system (FFS), able to alert in advance the UDS managers for possible flooding. For a forecasted storm event, a quick estimation of the water depth variation within critical manholes allows a reliable evaluation of the flood risk. The Nonlinear Auto Regressive with eXogenous inputs (NARX) neural network was chosen to develop the FFS as due to its calculation nature it is capable of relating water depth variation in manholes to rainfall intensities. The campus of the University of Lille is used as an experimental site to test and evaluate the FFS proposed in this paper.

  9. Building regional early flood warning systems by AI techniques

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, F. J.; Chang, L. C.; Amin, M. Z. B. M.

    2017-12-01

    Building early flood warning system is essential for the protection of the residents against flood hazards and make actions to mitigate the losses. This study implements AI technology for forecasting multi-step-ahead regional flood inundation maps during storm events. The methodology includes three major schemes: (1) configuring the self-organizing map (SOM) to categorize a large number of regional inundation maps into a meaningful topology; (2) building dynamic neural networks to forecast multi-step-ahead average inundated depths (AID); and (3) adjusting the weights of the selected neuron in the constructed SOM based on the forecasted AID to obtain real-time regional inundation maps. The proposed models are trained, and tested based on a large number of inundation data sets collected in regions with the most frequent and serious flooding in the river basin. The results appear that the SOM topological relationships between individual neurons and their neighbouring neurons are visible and clearly distinguishable, and the hybrid model can continuously provide multistep-ahead visible regional inundation maps with high resolution during storm events, which have relatively small RMSE values and high R2 as compared with numerical simulation data sets. The computing time is only few seconds, and thereby leads to real-time regional flood inundation forecasting and make early flood inundation warning system. We demonstrate that the proposed hybrid ANN-based model has a robust and reliable predictive ability and can be used for early warning to mitigate flood disasters.

  10. Integrated Flood Forecast and Virtual Dam Operation System for Water Resources and Flood Risk Management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shibuo, Yoshihiro; Ikoma, Eiji; Lawford, Peter; Oyanagi, Misa; Kanauchi, Shizu; Koudelova, Petra; Kitsuregawa, Masaru; Koike, Toshio

    2014-05-01

    While availability of hydrological- and hydrometeorological data shows growing tendency and advanced modeling techniques are emerging, such newly available data and advanced models may not always be applied in the field of decision-making. In this study we present an integrated system of ensemble streamflow forecast (ESP) and virtual dam simulator, which is designed to support river and dam manager's decision making. The system consists of three main functions: real time hydrological model, ESP model, and dam simulator model. In the real time model, the system simulates current condition of river basins, such as soil moisture and river discharges, using LSM coupled distributed hydrological model. The ESP model takes initial condition from the real time model's output and generates ESP, based on numerical weather prediction. The dam simulator model provides virtual dam operation and users can experience impact of dam control on remaining reservoir volume and downstream flood under the anticipated flood forecast. Thus the river and dam managers shall be able to evaluate benefit of priori dam release and flood risk reduction at the same time, on real time basis. Furthermore the system has been developed under the concept of data and models integration, and it is coupled with Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) - a Japanese national project for integrating and analyzing massive amount of observational and model data. Therefore it has advantage in direct use of miscellaneous data from point/radar-derived observation, numerical weather prediction output, to satellite imagery stored in data archive. Output of the system is accessible over the web interface, making information available with relative ease, e.g. from ordinary PC to mobile devices. We have been applying the system to the Upper Tone region, located northwest from Tokyo metropolitan area, and we show application example of the system in recent flood events caused by typhoons.

  11. Design of Sensor Data Processing Steps in an Air Pollution Monitoring System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kwang Woo Nam

    2011-11-01

    Full Text Available Environmental monitoring is required to understand the effects of various kinds of phenomena such as a flood, a typhoon, or a forest fire. To detect the environmental conditions in remote places, monitoring applications employ the sensor networks to detect conditions, context models to understand phenomena, and computing technology to process the large volumes of data. In this paper, we present an air pollution monitoring system to provide alarm messages about potentially dangerous areas with sensor data analysis. We design the data analysis steps to understand the detected air pollution regions and levels. The analyzed data is used to track the pollution and to give an alarm. This implemented monitoring system is used to mitigate the damages caused by air pollution.

  12. Geographical information system (GIS) application for flood prediction at Sungai Sembrong

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kamin, Masiri; Ahmad, Nor Farah Atiqah; Razali, Siti Nooraiin Mohd; Hilaham, Mashuda Mohamad; Rahman, Mohamad Abdul; Ngadiman, Norhayati; Sahat, Suhaila

    2017-10-01

    The occurrence of flood is one of natural disaster that often beset Malaysia. The latest incident that happened in 2007 was the worst occurrence of floods ever be set in Johor. Reporting floods mainly focused on rising water rising levels, so about once a focus on the area of flood delineation. A study focused on the effectiveness of using Geographic Information System (GIS) to predict the flood by taking Sg. Sembrong, Batu Pahat, Johor as study area. This study combined hydrological model and water balance model in the display to show the expected flood area for future reference. The minimum, maximum and average rainfall data for January 2007 at Sg Sembrong were used in this study. The data shows that flood does not occurs at the minimum and average rainfall of 17.2mm and 2mm respectively. At maximum rainfall, 203mm, shows the flood area was 9983 hectares with the highest level of the water depth was 2m. The result showed that the combination of hydrological models and water balance model in GIS is very suitable to be used as a tool to obtain preliminary information on flood immediately. Besides that, GIS system is a very powerful tool used in hydrology engineering to help the engineer and planner to imagine the real situation of flood events, doing flood analysis, problem solving and provide a rational, accurate and efficient decision making.

  13. A complete CFD tool for flooding forecasting

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nguyen, V.T.; Eberl, H.

    2004-01-01

    Every year, flooding does not only cause property damage of billions of dollars, but also threats to millions of human life around the world. The ability to accurately predict the extreme flooding in urban areas is of obvious importance in order to reduce flooding risks and to improve public safety. In this paper, a complete computational tool is presented that includes pre-processing, meshing, calculating and post-processing modules. The pre-processing procedure is used to interpolate the geometry of the river and floodplains where the data can not be obtained directly from measurements. The meshing procedure is implemented by a triangle mesh generator. The computational procedure is based on a Finite Element Method to discretize the two-dimensional depth-averaged equations for shallow water flow. The post-processing procedure, finally, is interfaced with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which can serve as a tool for monitoring and as an early warning system. The numerical model is verified and calibrated through many practical projects of flood protection for rivers in Germany. The numerical results show a very good agreement with data from the field survey, as well as data from past flood events. Thus the numerical model can be used as an important tool for flood prediction. (author)

  14. Coupling flood forecasting and social media crowdsourcing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalas, Milan; Kliment, Tomas; Salamon, Peter

    2016-04-01

    Social and mainstream media monitoring is being more and more recognized as valuable source of information in disaster management and response. The information on ongoing disasters could be detected in very short time and the social media can bring additional information to traditional data feeds (ground, remote observation schemes). Probably the biggest attempt to use the social media in the crisis management was the activation of the Digital Humanitarian Network by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in response to Typhoon Yolanda. The network of volunteers performing rapid needs & damage assessment by tagging reports posted to social media which were then used by machine learning classifiers as a training set to automatically identify tweets referring to both urgent needs and offers of help. In this work we will present the potential of coupling a social media streaming and news monitoring application ( GlobalFloodNews - www.globalfloodsystem.com) with a flood forecasting system (www.globalfloods.eu) and the geo-catalogue of the OGC services discovered in the Google Search Engine (WMS, WFS, WCS, etc.) to provide a full suite of information available to crisis management centers as fast as possible. In GlobalFloodNews we use advanced filtering of the real-time Twitter stream, where the relevant information is automatically extracted using natural language and signal processing techniques. The keyword filters are adjusted and optimized automatically using machine learning algorithms as new reports are added to the system. In order to refine the search results the forecasting system will be triggering an event-based search on the social media and OGC services relevant for crisis response (population distribution, critical infrastructure, hospitals etc.). The current version of the system makes use of USHAHIDI Crowdmap platform, which is designed to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email

  15. Floods in a changing climate: a review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hunt, J C R

    2002-07-15

    This paper begins with an analysis of flooding as a natural disaster for which the solutions to the environmental, social and economic problems are essentially those of identifying and overcoming hazards and vulnerability, reducing risk and damaging consequences. Long-term solutions to flooding problems, especially in a changing climate, should be sought in the wider context of developing more sustainable social organization, economics and technology. Then, developments are described of how scientific understanding, supported by practical modelling, is leading to predictions of how human-induced changes to climatic and geological conditions are likely to influence flooding over at least the next 300 years, through their influences on evaporation, precipitation, run-off, wind storm and sea-level rise. Some of the outstanding scientific questions raised by these problems are highlighted, such as the statistical and deterministic prediction of extreme events, the understanding and modelling of mechanisms that operate on varying length- and time-scales, and the complex interactions between biological, ecological and physical problems. Some options for reducing the impact of flooding by new technology include both improved prediction and monitoring with computer models, and remote sensing, flexible and focused warning systems, and permanent and temporary flood-reduction systems.

  16. The framework of a UAS-aided flash flood modeling system for coastal regions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, H.; Xu, H.

    2016-02-01

    Flash floods cause severe economic damage and are one of the leading causes of fatalities connected with natural disasters in the Gulf Coast region. Current flash flood modeling systems rely on empirical hydrological models driven by precipitation estimates only. Although precipitation is the driving factor for flash floods, soil moisture, urban drainage system and impervious surface have been recognized to have significant impacts on the development of flash floods. We propose a new flash flooding modeling system that integrates 3-D hydrological simulation with satellite and multi-UAS observations. It will have three advantages over existing modeling systems. First, it will incorporate 1-km soil moisture data through integrating satellite images from European SMOS mission and NASA's SMAP mission. The utilization of high-resolution satellite images will provide essential information to determine antecedent soil moisture condition, which is an essential control on flood generation. Second, this system is able to adjust flood forecasting based on real-time inundation information collected by multi-UAS. A group of UAS will be deployed during storm events to capture the changing extent of flooded areas and water depth at multiple critical locations simultaneously. Such information will be transmitted to a hydrological model to validate and improve flood simulation. Third, the backbone of this system is a state-of-the-art 3-D hydrological model that assimilates the hydrological information from satellites and multi-UAS. The model is able to address surface water-groundwater interactions and reflect the effects of various infrastructures. Using Web-GIS technologies, the modeling results will be available online as interactive flood maps accessible to the public. To support the development and verification of this modeling system, surface and subsurface hydrological observations will be conducted in a number of small watersheds in the Coastal Bend region. We envision this

  17. Damage assessment of bridge infrastructure subjected to flood-related hazards

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michalis, Panagiotis; Cahill, Paul; Bekić, Damir; Kerin, Igor; Pakrashi, Vikram; Lapthorne, John; Morais, João Gonçalo Martins Paulo; McKeogh, Eamon

    2017-04-01

    Transportation assets represent a critical component of society's infrastructure systems. Flood-related hazards are considered one of the main climate change impacts on highway and railway infrastructure, threatening the security and functionality of transportation systems. Of such hazards, flood-induced scour is a primarily cause of bridge collapses worldwide and one of the most complex and challenging water flow and erosion phenomena, leading to structural instability and ultimately catastrophic failures. Evaluation of scour risk under severe flood events is a particularly challenging issue considering that depth of foundations is very difficult to evaluate in water environment. The continual inspection, assessment and maintenance of bridges and other hydraulic structures under extreme flood events requires a multidisciplinary approach, including knowledge and expertise of hydraulics, hydrology, structural engineering, geotechnics and infrastructure management. The large number of bridges under a single management unit also highlights the need for efficient management, information sharing and self-informing systems to provide reliable, cost-effective flood and scour risk management. The "Intelligent Bridge Assessment Maintenance and Management System" (BRIDGE SMS) is an EU/FP7 funded project which aims to couple state-of-the art scientific expertise in multidisciplinary engineering sectors with industrial knowledge in infrastructure management. This involves the application of integrated low-cost structural health monitoring systems to provide real-time information towards the development of an intelligent decision support tool and a web-based platform to assess and efficiently manage bridge assets. This study documents the technological experience and presents results obtained from the application of sensing systems focusing on the damage assessment of water-hazards at bridges over watercourses in Ireland. The applied instrumentation is interfaced with an open

  18. BIOCHEM-ORCHESTRA: A tool for evaluating chemical speciation and ecotoxicological impacts of heavy metals on river flood plain systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Vink, J.P.M.; Meeussen, J.C.L.

    2007-01-01

    The chemical speciation model BIOCHEM was extended with ecotoxicological transfer functions for uptake of metals (As, Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn) by plants and soil invertebrates. It was coupled to the object-oriented framework ORCHESTRA to achieve a flexible and dynamic decision support system (DSS) to analyse natural or anthropogenic changes that occur in river systems. The DSS uses the chemical characteristics of soils and sediments as input, and calculates speciation and subsequent uptake by biota at various scenarios. Biotic transfer functions were field-validated, and actual hydrological conditions were derived from long-term monitoring data. The DSS was tested for several scenarios that occur in the Meuse catchment areas, such as flooding and sedimentation of riverine sediments on flood plains. Risks are expressed in terms of changes in chemical mobility, and uptake by flood plain key species (flora and fauna). - A diagnostic risk-assessment tool for heavy metals, based on biotic and abiotic interactions, compares risks under different environmental scenarios

  19. Flood Early Warning in Bridge Management System: from idea to implementation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kerin, Igor; Bekić, Damir; Michalis, Panagiotis; Šolman, Hrvoje; Cahill, Paul; Gilja, Gordon; Pakrashi, Vikram; Lapthorne, John; McKeogh, Eamon

    2017-04-01

    Recent advances in computational speed, cloud systems and GPRS data are some of the factors that have resulted in an increased number of operational and fully automatized Flood Early Warning Systems (FEWS). Flood forecasting is becoming a well-recognised solution for flood management as an indirect measure for minimising the risk should preventive or defence measures prove ineffective or are not feasible for implementation. Public acceptance of FEWS as a standalone solution is still considered to be at low level. Further public engagement regarding engineering risks and providing timely notifications and warnings can, however, establish the true value of such a system to the society in general. Flood risks can be direct, resulting in damage to buildings, infrastructure and natural resources, or indirect, which can be related to disaster losses leading to declines in commercial output or revenue and impact on wellbeing of people, typically from disruptions to the flow of goods and services. Flood risk and structural risks are closely related, thereby impacting the maintenance and management of bridges assets over watercourses. Many studies indicate that most bridge collapses are related to hydraulic effects and consequently scour issues (i.e. the removal of riverbed around bridge foundations due to flowing water). Consequently, hydraulic, hydrologic and geotechnical expertise and knowledge can lead to introducing FEWS as a key tool for Bridge Scour Management System (BSMS), forming a part of a BMS. The implementation of this concept was initiated with the EU/FP7 funded project BRIDGE SMS. The project introduces BSMS into the overall BMS to develop a reliable decision support tool which would efficiently manage bridge failure risks in a cost-effective way. This is accomplished through the development of FEWS, alongside monitoring systems that can provide important information about environmental and structural conditions at the catchment area and bridge site

  20. Understanding the geomorphology of macrochannel systems for flood risk management in Queensland, Australia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thompson, Chris; Croke, Jacky

    2016-04-01

    The year 2010-2011 was the wettest on record for the state of Queensland, Australia producing catastrophic floods. A tropical low pressure system in 2013 delivered further extreme flood events across South East Queensland (SEQ) which prompted state and local governments to conduct studies into flood magnitude and frequency in the region and catchment factors contributing to flood hazards. The floods in the region are strongly influenced by El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, but also modulated by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) which leads to flood and drought dominated regimes and high hydrological variability. One geomorphic feature in particular exerted a significant control on the transmission speed, the magnitude of flood inundation and resultant landscape resilience. This feature was referred to as a 'macrochannel', a term used to describe a 'large-channel' which has bankfull recurrence intervals generally greater than 10 years. The macrochannels display non-linear downstream hydraulic geometry which leads to zones of flood expansion (when hydraulic geometry decreases) and zones of flood contraction (when hydraulic geometry increases). The pattern of contraction and expansion zones determines flood hazard zones. The floods caused significant wet flow bank mass failures that mobilised over 1,000,000 m3 of sediment in one subcatchment. Results suggest that the wetflow bank mass failures are a stage in a cyclical evolution process which maintains the macrochannel morphology, hence channel resilience to floods. Chronological investigations further show the macrochannels are laterally stable and identify periods of heightened flood activity over the past millennium and upper limits on flood magnitude. This paper elaborates on the results of the geomorphic investigations on Lockyer Creek in SEQ and how the results have alerted managers and policy makers to the different flood responses of these systems and how flood risk management plans can

  1. Prototypes of risk-based flood forecasting systems in the Netherlands and Italy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bachmann D.

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Flood forecasting, warning and emergency response are important components of flood management. Currently, the model-based prediction of discharge and/or water level in a river is common practice for operational flood forecasting. Based on the prediction of these values decisions about specific emergency measures are made within emergency response. However, the information provided for decision support is often restricted to pure hydrological or hydraulic aspects of a flood. Information about weak sections within the flood defences, flood prone areas and assets at risk in the protected areas are rarely used in current early warning and response systems. This information is often available for strategic planning, but is not in an appropriate format for operational purposes. This paper presents the extension of existing flood forecasting systems with elements of strategic flood risk analysis, such as probabilistic failure analysis, two dimensional flood spreading simulation and the analysis of flood impacts and consequences. This paper presents the first results from two prototype applications of the new developed concept: The first prototype is applied to the Rotterdam area situated in the western part of the Netherlands. The second pilot study focusses on a rural area between the cities of Mantua and Ferrara along the Po river (Italy.

  2. Vulnerability assessment and mitigation for the Chinese railway system under floods

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hong, Liu; Ouyang, Min; Peeta, Srinivas; He, Xiaozheng; Yan, Yongze

    2015-01-01

    The economy of China and the travel needs of its citizens depend significantly on the continuous and reliable services provided by its railway system. However, this system is subject to frequent natural hazards, such as floods, earthquakes, and debris flow. A mechanism to assess the railway system vulnerability under these hazards and the design of effective vulnerability mitigation strategies are essential to the reliable functioning of the railway system. This article proposes a comprehensive methodology to quantitatively assess the railway system vulnerability under floods using historical data and GIS technology. The proposed methodology includes a network representation of the railway system, the generation of flood event scenarios, a method to estimate railway link vulnerability, and a quantitative vulnerability value computation approach. The railway system vulnerability is evaluated in terms of its service disruption related to the number of interrupted trains and the durations of interruption. A maintenance strategy to mitigate vulnerability is proposed that simultaneously considers link vulnerability and number of trains using it. Numerical experiments show that the flood-induced vulnerability of the proposed representation of the Chinese railway system reaches its maximum monthly value in July, and the proposed vulnerability mitigation strategy is more effective compared to other strategies. - Highlights: • We propose a methodology to assess flood-induced railway system vulnerability. • Railway system vulnerability is evaluated in terms of its service disruption. • Chinese railway system reaches its maximum monthly vulnerability in July. • We propose an effective maintenance strategy considering link vulnerability and burden

  3. Development of a national Flash flood warning system in France using the AIGA method: first results and main issues

    Science.gov (United States)

    Javelle, Pierre; Organde, Didier; Demargne, Julie; de Saint-Aubin, Céline; Garandeau, Léa; Janet, Bruno; Saint-Martin, Clotilde; Fouchier, Catherine

    2016-04-01

    Developing a national flash flood (FF) warning system is an ambitious and difficult task. On one hand it rises huge expectations from exposed populations and authorities since induced damages are considerable (ie 20 casualties in the recent October 2015 flood at the French Riviera). But on the other hand, many practical and scientific issues have to be addressed and limitations should be clearly stated. The FF warning system to be implemented by 2016 in France by the SCHAPI (French national service in charge of flood forecasting) will be based on a discharge-threshold flood warning method called AIGA (Javelle et al. 2014). The AIGA method has been experimented in real time in the south of France in the RHYTMME project (http://rhytmme.irstea.fr). It consists in comparing discharges generated by a simple conceptual hourly hydrologic model run at a 1-km² resolution to reference flood quantiles of different return periods, at any point along the river network. The hydrologic model ingests operational rainfall radar-gauge products from Météo-France. Model calibration was based on ~700 hydrometric stations over the 2002-2015 period and then hourly discharges were computed at ~76 000 catchment outlets, with areas ranging from 10 to 3 500 km², over the last 19 years. This product makes it possible to calculate reference flood quantiles at each outlet. The on-going evaluation of the FF warnings is currently made at two levels: in a 'classical' way, using discharges available at the hydrometric stations, but also in a more 'exploratory' way, by comparing past flood reports and warnings issued by the system over the 76 000 catchment outlets. The interest of the last method is that it better fit the system objectives since it is designed to monitor small ungauged catchments. Javelle, P., Demargne, J., Defrance, D, .Pansu, J, .Arnaud, P. (2014). Evaluating flash-flood warnings at ungauged locations using post-event surveys: a case study with the AIGA warning system

  4. Flood risk and economically optimal safety targets for coastal flood defense systems

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dupuits, E.J.C.; Schweckendiek, T.

    2015-01-01

    A front defense can improve the reliability of a rear defense in a coastal flood defense system. The influence of this interdependency on the accompanying economically optimal safety targets of both front and rear defense is investigated. The results preliminary suggest that the optimal safety level

  5. Detecting SYN flood attacks via statistical monitoring charts: A comparative study

    KAUST Repository

    Bouyeddou, Benamar; Harrou, Fouzi; Sun, Ying; Kadri, Benamar

    2017-01-01

    Accurate detection of cyber-attacks plays a central role in safeguarding computer networks and information systems. This paper addresses the problem of detecting SYN flood attacks, which are the most popular Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Here, we

  6. Information support systems for cultural heritage protection against flooding

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    K. Nedvedova

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available The goal of this paper is to present use of different kind of software applications to create complex support system for protection of cultural heritage against flooding. The project is very complex and it tries to cover the whole area of the problem from prevention to liquidation of aftermath effects. We used GIS for mapping the risk areas, ontology systems for vulnerability assessment application and the BORM method (Business Object Relation Modelling for flood protection system planning guide. Those modern technologies helped us to gather a lot of information in one place and provide the knowledge to the broad audience.

  7. Estimated flood-inundation maps for Cowskin Creek in western Wichita, Kansas

    Science.gov (United States)

    Studley, Seth E.

    2003-01-01

    The October 31, 1998, flood on Cowskin Creek in western Wichita, Kansas, caused millions of dollars in damages. Emergency management personnel and flood mitigation teams had difficulty in efficiently identifying areas affected by the flooding, and no warning was given to residents because flood-inundation information was not available. To provide detailed information about future flooding on Cowskin Creek, high-resolution estimated flood-inundation maps were developed using geographic information system technology and advanced hydraulic analysis. Two-foot-interval land-surface elevation data from a 1996 flood insurance study were used to create a three-dimensional topographic representation of the study area for hydraulic analysis. The data computed from the hydraulic analyses were converted into geographic information system format with software from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Hydrologic Engineering Center. The results were overlaid on the three-dimensional topographic representation of the study area to produce maps of estimated flood-inundation areas and estimated depths of water in the inundated areas for 1-foot increments on the basis of stream stage at an index streamflow-gaging station. A Web site (http://ks.water.usgs.gov/Kansas/cowskin.floodwatch) was developed to provide the public with information pertaining to flooding in the study area. The Web site shows graphs of the real-time streamflow data for U.S. Geological Survey gaging stations in the area and monitors the National Weather Service Arkansas-Red Basin River Forecast Center for Cowskin Creek flood-forecast information. When a flood is forecast for the Cowskin Creek Basin, an estimated flood-inundation map is displayed for the stream stage closest to the National Weather Service's forecasted peak stage. Users of the Web site are able to view the estimated flood-inundation maps for selected stages at any time and to access information about this report and about flooding in general. Flood

  8. A Conceptual Flash Flood Early Warning System for Africa, Based on Terrestrial Microwave Links and Flash Flood Guidance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joost C. B. Hoedjes

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available A conceptual flash flood early warning system for developing countries is described. The system uses rainfall intensity data from terrestrial microwave communication links and the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation satellite, i.e., two systems that are already in place and operational. Flash flood early warnings are based on a combination of the Flash Flood Guidance method and a hydrological model. The system will be maintained and operated through a public-private partnership, which includes a mobile telephone operator, a national meteorological service and an emergency relief service. The mobile telephone operator acts as both the supplier of raw input data and the disseminator of early warnings. The early warning system could significantly reduce the number of fatalities due to flash floods, improve the efficiency of disaster risk reduction efforts and play an important role in strengthening the resilience to climate change of developing countries in Africa. This paper describes the system that is currently being developed for Kenya.

  9. Towards a Flood Severity Index

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kettner, A.; Chong, A.; Prades, L.; Brakenridge, G. R.; Muir, S.; Amparore, A.; Slayback, D. A.; Poungprom, R.

    2017-12-01

    Flooding is the most common natural hazard worldwide, affecting 21 million people every year. In the immediate moments following a flood event, humanitarian actors like the World Food Program need to make rapid decisions ( 72 hrs) on how to prioritize affected areas impacted by such an event. For other natural disasters like hurricanes/cyclones and earthquakes, there are industry-recognized standards on how the impacted areas are to be classified. Shake maps, quantifying peak ground motion, from for example the US Geological Survey are widely used for assessing earthquakes. Similarly, cyclones are tracked by Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) and Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) who release storm nodes and tracks (forecasted and actual), with wind buffers and classify the event according to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. For floods, the community is usually able to acquire unclassified data of the flood extent as identified from satellite imagery. Most often no water discharge hydrograph is available to classify the event into recurrence intervals simply because there is no gauging station, or the gauging station was unable to record the maximum discharge due to overtopping or flood damage. So, the question remains: How do we methodically turn a flooded area into classified areas of different gradations of impact? Here, we present a first approach towards developing a global applicable flood severity index. The flood severity index is set up such that it considers relatively easily obtainable physical parameters in a short period of time like: flood frequency (relating the current flood to historical events) and magnitude, as well as land cover, slope, and where available pre-event simulated flood depth. The scale includes categories ranging from very minor flooding to catastrophic flooding. We test and evaluate the postulated classification scheme against a set of past flood events. Once a severity category is determined, socio

  10. An overview of road damages due to flooding: Case study in Kedah state, Malaysia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ismail, Muhd Shahril Nizam; Ghani, Abdul Naser Abdul

    2017-10-01

    Flooding occurs frequently in many countries including Malaysia. Floods in Malaysia are usually due to heavy and prolonged rainfall, uncontrolled development, and drainage systems that are not being monitored. Road damage due to flooding event can cause huge expenditures for the post-flooding rehabilitation and maintenance. The required maintenance and rehabilitation could upset the original life cycle cost estimations. Data on road statistics were obtained from the Highway Planning Division, Ministry of Works Malaysia and data on flooding was collected from the Department of Irrigation and Drainage Malaysia for events between 2012 and 2015. The pilot sites were selected based on its historical cases of floods that caused road damages in Kedah. The pilot site indicated that the impact of flooding on road infrastructures systems can be used to plan better road design and maintenances. It also revealed that it costs more than RM 1 million to reinstate roads damaged by flooding in a typical district annually.

  11. A remote and autonomous continuous monitoring ultrasonic system for flood detection in sub-sea members of offshore steel oil rigs

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Mijarez-Castro, Rito

    2006-07-01

    This thesis presents a novel and autonomous continuous monitoring system for flood detection in the hollow sub-sea members of offshore steel oil rigs. The technique offers an alternative to underwater nondestructive testing methods based on ultrasound and x-rays, which have been used to detect the presence of seawater in these applications, often with divers or remote operating vehicles. The research consists of theoretical and experimental work necessary for the development of an integral system that can be used in new fixed offshore oil rig designs. The system employs a single piezoelectric transducer which can be permanently attached to the inner wall of every sub-sea structure and which is powered by a normally inert seawater battery. Upon activation, the sensor transmits ultrasonic chirp or tone encoded pulses in the range of 21 k Hz to 42 k Hz, to a monitoring system at deck level for decoding and identifying flooded members. Two approaches to the system were considered during the investigation, depending on the communication channel exploited. These were based on either using the seawater as a propagation medium or using the steel structure as a wave-guide. A system based on theoretical models was built and field experiments were conducted using a purpose built jointed steel pipe structure, 7 m in length, 0.5 m in diameter and 16 mm in thickness. This structure was flooded by complete immersion in seawater. Results obtained using water as communication medium and a frequency in the order of 38 k Hz yielded an attenuation figure of 0.4 d B m{sub -}1 over 100 m, since losses were predominantly geometric. In contrast, using the tubular structure as a wave-guide and axis symmetric guided waves as the excitation, a gross attenuation figure of 1.3 d B m{sub -}1 was attained. In the straight parts of the structure, the attenuation ranged from 0.3 d B m{sub -} 1 to 0.6 d B m{sub -}1. The modes most likely to have been excited within the structure were L(0,5) - L(0

  12. Open Source and Open Standard based decision support system: the example of lake Verbano floods management.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cannata, Massimiliano; Antonovic, Milan; Pozzoni, Maurizio; Graf, Andrea

    2015-04-01

    The Locarno area (Switzerland, Canton Ticino) is exposed to lacual floods with a return period of about 7-8 years. The risk is of particular concern because the area is located in a floodplain that registered in the last decades a great increase in settlement and values of the real estates. Moreover small differences in lake altitude may produce a significant increase in flooded area due to the very low average slope of the terrain. While fatalities are not generally registered, several important economic costs are associated, e.g.: damages to real estates, interruption of activities, evacuation and relocation and environmental damages. While important events were registered in 1978, 1993, 2000, 2002 and 2014 the local stakeholder invested time and money in the set-up of an up-to-date decision support system that allows for the reduction of risks. Thanks to impressive technological advances the visionary concept of the Digital Earth (Gore 1992, 1998) is being realizing: geospatial coverages and monitoring systems data are increasingly available on the Web, and more importantly, in a standard format. As a result, today is possible to develop innovative decision support systems (Molinari et al. 2013) which mesh-up several information sources and offers special features for risk scenarios evaluation. In agreement with the exposed view, the authors have recently developed a new Web system whose design is based on the Service Oriented Architecture pattern. Open source software (e.g.: Geoserver, PostGIS, OpenLayers) has been used throughout the whole system and geospatial Open Standards (e.g.: SOS, WMS, WFS) are the pillars it rely on. SITGAP 2.0, implemented in collaboration with the Civil protection of Locarno e Vallemaggia, combines a number of data sources such as the Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings, the Cantonal Register of residents, the Cadastral Surveying, the Cantonal Hydro-meteorological monitoring observations, the Meteoswiss weather forecasts, and

  13. WiP abstract: Optimal multi-agent path planning for fast inverse modeling in UAV-based flood sensing applications

    KAUST Repository

    Abdelkader, Mohamed; Shaqura, Mohammad; Ghommem, Mehdi; Collier, Nathan O.; Calo, Victor M.; Claudel, Christian G.

    2014-01-01

    Floods are one of the most commonly occurring natural disasters, and caused more than 120,000 fatalities in the world between 1991 and 2005. Most of these casualties are caused by the lack of a reliable real-time flash flood monitoring system. Given the area to monitor, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) appear as the most promising solutions for this task. © 2014 IEEE.

  14. WiP abstract: Optimal multi-agent path planning for fast inverse modeling in UAV-based flood sensing applications

    KAUST Repository

    Abdelkader, Mohamed

    2014-04-01

    Floods are one of the most commonly occurring natural disasters, and caused more than 120,000 fatalities in the world between 1991 and 2005. Most of these casualties are caused by the lack of a reliable real-time flash flood monitoring system. Given the area to monitor, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) appear as the most promising solutions for this task. © 2014 IEEE.

  15. Catchment scale multi-objective flood management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rose, Steve; Worrall, Peter; Rosolova, Zdenka; Hammond, Gene

    2010-05-01

    techniques will include: controlling headwater drainage, increasing evapotranspiration and interception by creating new woodlands in the upper catchment areas, enabling coarse woody debris dams to slow down water flows through steep valleys, improving soil water storage potential by appropriate soil and crop management, retaining water on lowland flood meadows and wet woodland creation within the floodplain. The project, due to run from 2009 until 2013, incorporates hydrometric and water quality monitoring, together with hydrologic and hydraulic modelling in order to attempt to demonstrate the effect of land management changes on flood dynamics and flood risk management. To date, the project team have undertaken the fundamental catchment characterisation work to understand its physical setting and the interaction of the physical processes that influence the hydrological response of the catchment to incident precipitation. The results of this initial work has led to the identification of a suitably robust hydrometric monitoring network within the catchments to meet the needs of providing both quantitative evidence of the impacts of land management change on flood risk, together with generating good quality datasets for the validation and testing of the new hydrologic models. As the project aims to demonstrate ‘best practice' in all areas, the opportunity has been taken to install a network of automatic hydrometric monitoring equipment, together with an associated telemetry system, in order to maximise data coverage, accuracy and reliability. Good quality datasets are a critical requirement for reliable modelling. The modelling will also be expanded to incorporate climate change scenarios. This paper will describe the catchment characterisation work undertaken to date, the proposed land management changes in relation to flood risk management, the initial catchment hydraulic modelling work and the implementation of the new hydrometric monitoring network within the study area.

  16. Early Warning System of Flood Disaster Based on Ultrasonic Sensors and Wireless Technology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Indrasari, W.; Iswanto, B. H.; Andayani, M.

    2018-04-01

    A flood disaster provides considerable losses to the people who live around the river. To mitigate losses of material due to flood disaster required an early warning system of flood disaster. For that reason, it necessary to design a system that provide alert to the people prior the flood disaster. And this paper describes development of a device for early detection system of flood disasters. This device consists of two ultrasonic sensors as a water level detector, and a water flow sensor as a water flow velocity sensor. The wireless technology and GSM is used as an information medium. The system is designed based on water level conditions in the Katulampa Dam, Bogor. Characterization of water level detector showed that the device effectively works in a range of water level of 14-250 cm, with a maximum relative error of 4.3%. Meanwhile the wireless works properly as far as 75 m, and the SMS transmission time is 8.20 second.

  17. Combining Space-Based and In-Situ Measurements to Track Flooding in Thailand

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chien, Steve; Doubleday, Joshua; Mclaren, David; Tran, Daniel; Tanpipat, Veerachai; Chitradon, Royal; Boonya-aaroonnet, Surajate; Thanapakpawin, Porranee; Khunboa, Chatchai; Leelapatra, Watis; hide

    2011-01-01

    We describe efforts to integrate in-situ sensing, space-borne sensing, hydrological modeling, active control of sensing, and automatic data product generation to enhance monitoring and management of flooding. In our approach, broad coverage sensors and missions such as MODIS, TRMM, and weather satellite information and in-situ weather and river gauging information are all inputs to track flooding via river basin and sub-basin hydrological models. While these inputs can provide significant information as to the major flooding, targetable space measurements can provide better spatial resolution measurements of flooding extent. In order to leverage such assets we automatically task observations in response to automated analysis indications of major flooding. These new measurements are automatically processed and assimilated with the other flooding data. We describe our ongoing efforts to deploy this system to track major flooding events in Thailand.

  18. Iowa Flood Information System: Towards Integrated Data Management, Analysis and Visualization

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, I.; Krajewski, W. F.; Goska, R.; Mantilla, R.; Weber, L. J.; Young, N.

    2012-04-01

    The Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) is a web-based platform developed by the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) to provide access to flood inundation maps, real-time flood conditions, flood forecasts both short-term and seasonal, flood-related data, information and interactive visualizations for communities in Iowa. The key element of the system's architecture is the notion of community. Locations of the communities, those near streams and rivers, define basin boundaries. The IFIS provides community-centric watershed and river characteristics, weather (rainfall) conditions, and streamflow data and visualization tools. Interactive interfaces allow access to inundation maps for different stage and return period values, and flooding scenarios with contributions from multiple rivers. Real-time and historical data of water levels, gauge heights, and rainfall conditions are available in the IFIS by streaming data from automated IFC bridge sensors, USGS stream gauges, NEXRAD radars, and NWS forecasts. Simple 2D and 3D interactive visualizations in the IFIS make the data more understandable to general public. Users are able to filter data sources for their communities and selected rivers. The data and information on IFIS is also accessible through web services and mobile applications. The IFIS is optimized for various browsers and screen sizes to provide access through multiple platforms including tablets and mobile devices. The IFIS includes a rainfall-runoff forecast model to provide a five-day flood risk estimate for around 500 communities in Iowa. Multiple view modes in the IFIS accommodate different user types from general public to researchers and decision makers by providing different level of tools and details. River view mode allows users to visualize data from multiple IFC bridge sensors and USGS stream gauges to follow flooding condition along a river. The IFIS will help communities make better-informed decisions on the occurrence of floods, and will alert communities

  19. Empirical Modeling of Spatial 3D Flow Characteristics Using a Remote-Controlled ADCP System: Monitoring a Spring Flood

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Claude Flener

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available The use of acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP for measuring streamflow and discharge is becoming increasingly widespread. The spatial distribution of flow patterns is useful data in studying riverine habitats and geomorphology. Until now, most flow mapping has focused on measurements along a series of transects in a channel. Here, we set out to measure, model and analyze the 3D flow characteristics of a natural river over a continuous areal extent, quantifying flow velocity, 3D flow directions, volumes, water depth and their changes over time. We achieved multidimensional spatial flow measurements by deploying an ADCP on a remotely-controlled boat, combined with kinematic GNSS positioning and locally-monitored water level data. We processed this data into a 3D point cloud of accurately positioned individual 3D flow measurements that allows the visual analysis of flow velocities, directions and channel morphology in 3D space. We demonstrate how this allows monitoring changes of flow patterns with a time series of flow point clouds measured over the period of a spring flood in Finnish Lapland. Furthermore, interpolating the raw point cloud onto a 3D matrix allows us to quantify volumetric flow while reducing noise in the data. We can now quantify the volumes of water moving at certain velocities in a given reach and their location in 3D space, allowing, for instance, the monitoring of the high-velocity core and its changes over time.

  20. Health protection and risks for rescuers in cases of floods.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Janev Holcer, Nataša; Jeličić, Pavle; Grba Bujević, Maja; Važanić, Damir

    2015-03-01

    Floods can pose a number of safety and health hazards for flood-affected populations and rescuers and bring risk of injuries, infections, and diseases due to exposure to pathogenic microorganisms and different biological and chemical contaminants. The risk factors and possible health consequences for the rescuers involved in evacuation and rescuing operations during the May 2014 flood crisis in Croatia are shown, as well as measures for the prevention of injuries and illnesses. In cases of extreme floods, divers play a particularly important role in rescuing and first-response activities. Rescuing in contaminated floodwaters means that the used equipment such as diving suits should be disinfected afterwards. The need for securing the implementation of minimal health and safety measures for involved rescuers is paramount. Data regarding injuries and disease occurrences among rescuers are relatively scarce, indicating the need for medical surveillance systems that would monitor and record all injuries and disease occurrences among rescuers in order to ensure sound epidemiological data. The harmful effects of flooding can be reduced by legislation, improvement of flood forecasting, establishing early warning systems, and appropriate planning and education.

  1. The state of the art of flood forecasting - Hydrological Ensemble Prediction Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thielen-Del Pozo, J.; Pappenberger, F.; Salamon, P.; Bogner, K.; Burek, P.; de Roo, A.

    2010-09-01

    Flood forecasting systems form a key part of ‘preparedness' strategies for disastrous floods and provide hydrological services, civil protection authorities and the public with information of upcoming events. Provided the warning leadtime is sufficiently long, adequate preparatory actions can be taken to efficiently reduce the impacts of the flooding. Because of the specific characteristics of each catchment, varying data availability and end-user demands, the design of the best flood forecasting system may differ from catchment to catchment. However, despite the differences in concept and data needs, there is one underlying issue that spans across all systems. There has been an growing awareness and acceptance that uncertainty is a fundamental issue of flood forecasting and needs to be dealt with at the different spatial and temporal scales as well as the different stages of the flood generating processes. Today, operational flood forecasting centres change increasingly from single deterministic forecasts to probabilistic forecasts with various representations of the different contributions of uncertainty. The move towards these so-called Hydrological Ensemble Prediction Systems (HEPS) in flood forecasting represents the state of the art in forecasting science, following on the success of the use of ensembles for weather forecasting (Buizza et al., 2005) and paralleling the move towards ensemble forecasting in other related disciplines such as climate change predictions. The use of HEPS has been internationally fostered by initiatives such as "The Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment" (HEPEX), created with the aim to investigate how best to produce, communicate and use hydrologic ensemble forecasts in hydrological short-, medium- und long term prediction of hydrological processes. The advantages of quantifying the different contributions of uncertainty as well as the overall uncertainty to obtain reliable and useful flood forecasts also for extreme events

  2. Thirty Years Later: Reflections of the Big Thompson Flood, Colorado, 1976 to 2006

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jarrett, R. D.; Costa, J. E.; Brunstein, F. C.; Quesenberry, C. A.; Vandas, S. J.; Capesius, J. P.; O'Neill, G. B.

    2006-12-01

    . When substantial flooding occurs, the USGS mobilizes personnel to collect streamflow data in affected areas. Streamflow data improve flood forecasting and provide data for flood-frequency analysis for floodplain management, design of structures located in floodplains, and related water studies. An important lesson learned is that nature provides environmental signs before and during floods that can help people avoid hazard areas. Important contributions to flood science as a result of the 1976 flood include development of paleoflood methods to interpret the preserved flood-plain stratigraphy to document the number, magnitude, and age of floods that occurred prior to streamflow monitoring. These methods and data on large floods can be used in many mountain-river systems to help us better understand flood hazards and plan for the future. For example, according to conventional flood-frequency analysis, the 1976 Big Thompson flood had a flood recurrence interval of about 100 years. However, paleoflood research indicated the 1976 flood was the largest in about the last 10,000 years in the basin and had a flood recurrence interval in excess of 1,000 years.

  3. Recent advances in flood forecasting and flood risk assessment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    G. Arduino

    2005-01-01

    Full Text Available Recent large floods in Europe have led to increased interest in research and development of flood forecasting systems. Some of these events have been provoked by some of the wettest rainfall periods on record which has led to speculation that such extremes are attributable in some measure to anthropogenic global warming and represent the beginning of a period of higher flood frequency. Whilst current trends in extreme event statistics will be difficult to discern, conclusively, there has been a substantial increase in the frequency of high floods in the 20th century for basins greater than 2x105 km2. There is also increasing that anthropogenic forcing of climate change may lead to an increased probability of extreme precipitation and, hence, of flooding. There is, therefore, major emphasis on the improvement of operational flood forecasting systems in Europe, with significant European Community spending on research and development on prototype forecasting systems and flood risk management projects. This Special Issue synthesises the most relevant scientific and technological results presented at the International Conference on Flood Forecasting in Europe held in Rotterdam from 3-5 March 2003. During that meeting 150 scientists, forecasters and stakeholders from four continents assembled to present their work and current operational best practice and to discuss future directions of scientific and technological efforts in flood prediction and prevention. The papers presented at the conference fall into seven themes, as follows.

  4. Influence of Flood Detention Capability in Flood Prevention for Flood Disaster of Depression Area

    OpenAIRE

    Chia Lin Chan; Yi Ju Yang; Chih Chin Yang

    2011-01-01

    Rainfall records of rainfall station including the rainfall potential per hour and rainfall mass of five heavy storms are explored, respectively from 2001 to 2010. The rationalization formula is to investigate the capability of flood peak duration of flood detention pond in different rainfall conditions. The stable flood detention model is also proposed by using system dynamic control theory to get the message of flood detention pond in this research. When rainfall freque...

  5. Floods in 2002 and 2013: comparing flood warnings and emergency measures from the perspective of affected parties

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kreibich, Heidi; Pech, Ina; Schröter, Kai; Müller, Meike; Thieken, Annegret

    2016-04-01

    Early warning is essential for protecting people and mitigating damage in case of flood events. However, early warning is only helpful if the flood-endangered parties are reached by the warning and if they know how to react effectively. Finding suitable methods for communicating helpful warnings to the "last mile" remains a challenge, but not much information is available. Surveys were undertaken after the August 2002 and the June 2013 floods in Germany, asking affected private households and companies about warnings they received and emergency measures they undertook. Results show, that in 2002 early warning did not work well: in too many areas warnings came too late or were too imprecise and many people (27%) and companies (45%) did not receive a flood warning. Afterwards, the warning systems were significantly improved, so that in 2013 only a small share of the affected people (7%) and companies (7 %) was not reached by any warning. Additionally, private households and companies were hardly aware of the flood risk in the Elbe catchment before 2002, mainly due to a lack of flood experience. For instance, in 2002 only 14% of private households clearly knew how to protect themselves and their assets when the warning reached them, in 2013 this fraction was 46 %. Although the share of companies which had an emergency plan in place had increased from 10 % in 2002 to 26 % in 2013, and the share of those conducting regular emergency exercises had increased from 4 % to 13 %, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Therefore, integrated early warning systems from monitoring through to the reaction of the affected parties as well as effective risk and emergency communication need continuous further improvement to protect people and mitigate residual risks in case of floods.

  6. Implementing the national AIGA flash flood warning system in France

    Science.gov (United States)

    Organde, Didier; Javelle, Pierre; Demargne, Julie; Arnaud, Patrick; Caseri, Angelica; Fine, Jean-Alain; de Saint Aubin, Céline

    2015-04-01

    The French national hydro-meteorological and flood forecasting centre (SCHAPI) aims to implement a national flash flood warning system to improve flood alerts for small-to-medium (up to 1000 km2) ungauged basins. This system is based on the AIGA method, co-developed by IRSTEA these last 10 years. The method, initially set up for the Mediterranean area, is based on a simple event-based hourly hydrologic distributed model run every 15 minutes (Javelle et al. 2014). The hydrologic model ingests operational radar-gauge rainfall grids from Météo-France at a 1-km² resolution to produce discharges for successive outlets along the river network. Discharges are then compared to regionalized flood quantiles of given return periods and warnings (expressed as the range of the return period estimated in real-time) are provided on a river network map. The main interest of the method is to provide forecasters and emergency services with a synthetic view in real time of the ongoing flood situation, information that is especially critical in ungauged flood prone areas. In its enhanced national version, the hourly event-based distributed model is coupled to a continuous daily rainfall-runoff model which provides baseflow and a soil moisture index (for each 1-km² pixel) at the beginning of the hourly simulation. The rainfall-runoff models were calibrated on a selection of 700 French hydrometric stations with Météo-France radar-gauge reanalysis dataset for the 2002-2006 period. To estimate model parameters for ungauged basins, the 2 hydrologic models were regionalised by testing both regressions (using different catchment attributes, such as catchment area, soil type, and climate characteristic) and spatial proximity techniques (transposing parameters from neighbouring donor catchments), as well as different homogeneous hydrological areas. The most valuable regionalisation method was determined for each model through jack-knife cross-validation. The system performance was then

  7. Performance of vapor compression systems with compressor oil flooding and regeneration

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bell, Ian H.; Groll, Eckhard A.; Braun, James E. [Purdue University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 140 S. Martin Jischke Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47906 (United States)

    2011-01-15

    Vapor compression refrigeration technology has seen great improvement over the last several decades in terms of cycle efficiency through a concerted effort of manufacturers, regulators, and research engineers. As the standard vapor compression systems approach practical limits, cycle modifications should be investigated to increase system efficiency and capacity. One possible means of increasing cycle efficiency is to flood the compressor with a large quantity of oil to achieve a quasi-isothermal compression process, in addition to using a regenerator to increase refrigerant subcooling. In theory, compressor flooding and regeneration can provide a significant increase in system efficiency over the standard vapor compression system. The effectiveness of compressor flooding and regeneration increases as the temperature lift of the system increases. Therefore, this technology is particularly well suited towards lower evaporating temperatures and high ambient temperatures as seen in supermarket refrigeration applications. While predicted increases in cycle efficiency are over 40% for supermarket refrigeration applications, this technology is still very beneficial for typical air-conditioning applications, for which improvements in cycle efficiency greater than 5% are predicted. It has to be noted though that the beneficial effects of compressor flooding can only be realized if a regenerator is used to exchange heat between the refrigerant vapor exiting the evaporator and the liquid exiting the condenser. (author)

  8. Real-time flood inundation forecasting and mapping for key railway infrastructure: a UK case study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Murphy Alexandra T.

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Flooding events that impede railway infrastructure can cause severe travel delays for the general public and large fines in delayed minutes for the rail industry. Early warnings of flood inundation can give more time to implement mitigation measures which help reduce cancellations, delays and fines. Initial work is reported on the development of a real-time flood inundation forecasting and mapping system for the Cowley Bridge track area near Exeter, UK. This location is on one of the main access routes to South West England and has suffered major floods in the past resulting in significant transport impacts. Flood forecasting systems in the UK mainly forecast river level/flow rather than extent and depth of flood inundation. Here, the development of a chain of coupled models is discussed that link rainfall to river flow, river level and flood extent for the rail track area relating to Cowley Bridge. Historical events are identified to test model performance in predicting inundation of railway infrastructure. The modelling system will operate alongside a series of in-situ sensors chosen to enhance the flood mapping forecasting system. Sensor data will support offline model calibration/verification and real-time data assimilation as well as monitoring flood conditions to inform track closure decisions.

  9. Development of web-based services for an ensemble flood forecasting and risk assessment system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yaw Manful, Desmond; He, Yi; Cloke, Hannah; Pappenberger, Florian; Li, Zhijia; Wetterhall, Fredrik; Huang, Yingchun; Hu, Yuzhong

    2010-05-01

    Flooding is a wide spread and devastating natural disaster worldwide. Floods that took place in the last decade in China were ranked the worst amongst recorded floods worldwide in terms of the number of human fatalities and economic losses (Munich Re-Insurance). Rapid economic development and population expansion into low lying flood plains has worsened the situation. Current conventional flood prediction systems in China are neither suited to the perceptible climate variability nor the rapid pace of urbanization sweeping the country. Flood prediction, from short-term (a few hours) to medium-term (a few days), needs to be revisited and adapted to changing socio-economic and hydro-climatic realities. The latest technology requires implementation of multiple numerical weather prediction systems. The availability of twelve global ensemble weather prediction systems through the ‘THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble' (TIGGE) offers a good opportunity for an effective state-of-the-art early forecasting system. A prototype of a Novel Flood Early Warning System (NEWS) using the TIGGE database is tested in the Huai River basin in east-central China. It is the first early flood warning system in China that uses the massive TIGGE database cascaded with river catchment models, the Xinanjiang hydrologic model and a 1-D hydraulic model, to predict river discharge and flood inundation. The NEWS algorithm is also designed to provide web-based services to a broad spectrum of end-users. The latter presents challenges as both databases and proprietary codes reside in different locations and converge at dissimilar times. NEWS will thus make use of a ready-to-run grid system that makes distributed computing and data resources available in a seamless and secure way. An ability to run or function on different operating systems and provide an interface or front that is accessible to broad spectrum of end-users is additional requirement. The aim is to achieve robust interoperability

  10. Flash Flood Detection in Urban Cities Using Ultrasonic and Infrared Sensors

    KAUST Repository

    Mousa, Mustafa; Zhang, Xiangliang; Claudel, Christian

    2016-01-01

    Floods are the most common type of natural disaster. Often leading to loss of lives and properties in the thousands yearly. Among these events, urban flash floods are particularly deadly because of the short timescales on which they occur, and because of the population density of cities. Since most flood casualties are caused by a lack of information on the impending flood (type, location, severity), sensing these events is critical to generate accurate and detailed warnings and short term forecasts. However, no dedicated flash flood sensing systems, that could monitor the propagation of flash floods, in real time, currently exist in cities. In the present paper, firstly a new sensing device that can simultaneously monitor urban flash floods and traffic congestion has been presented. This sensing device is based on the combination of ultrasonic range-finding with remote temperature sensing, and can sense both phenomena with a high degree of accuracy, using a combination of L1-regularized reconstruction and artificial neural networks to process measurement data. Secondly, corresponding algorithms have been implemented on a low-power wireless sensor platform, and their performance in water level estimation in a 6 months test involving four different sensors is illustrated. The results demonstrate that urban water levels can be reliably estimated with error less than 2 cm, and that the preprocessing and machine learning schemes can run in real-time on currently available wireless sensor platforms.

  11. Flash Flood Detection in Urban Cities Using Ultrasonic and Infrared Sensors

    KAUST Repository

    Mousa, Mustafa

    2016-07-19

    Floods are the most common type of natural disaster. Often leading to loss of lives and properties in the thousands yearly. Among these events, urban flash floods are particularly deadly because of the short timescales on which they occur, and because of the population density of cities. Since most flood casualties are caused by a lack of information on the impending flood (type, location, severity), sensing these events is critical to generate accurate and detailed warnings and short term forecasts. However, no dedicated flash flood sensing systems, that could monitor the propagation of flash floods, in real time, currently exist in cities. In the present paper, firstly a new sensing device that can simultaneously monitor urban flash floods and traffic congestion has been presented. This sensing device is based on the combination of ultrasonic range-finding with remote temperature sensing, and can sense both phenomena with a high degree of accuracy, using a combination of L1-regularized reconstruction and artificial neural networks to process measurement data. Secondly, corresponding algorithms have been implemented on a low-power wireless sensor platform, and their performance in water level estimation in a 6 months test involving four different sensors is illustrated. The results demonstrate that urban water levels can be reliably estimated with error less than 2 cm, and that the preprocessing and machine learning schemes can run in real-time on currently available wireless sensor platforms.

  12. Integrating High-Resolution Taskable Imagery into a Sensorweb for Automatic Space-Based Monitoring of Flooding in Thailand

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chien, Steve; Mclaren, David; Doubleday, Joshua; Tran, Daniel; Tanpipat, Veerachai; Chitradon, Royol; Boonya-aroonnet, Surajate; Thanapakpawin, Porranee; Mandl, Daniel

    2012-01-01

    Several space-based assets (Terra, Aqua, Earth Observing One) have been integrated into a sensorweb to monitor flooding in Thailand. In this approach, the Moderate Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) data from Terra and Aqua is used to perform broad-scale monitoring to track flooding at the regional level (250m/pixel) and EO-1 is autonomously tasked in response to alerts to acquire higher resolution (30m/pixel) Advanced Land Imager (ALI) data. This data is then automatically processed to derive products such as surface water extent and volumetric water estimates. These products are then automatically pushed to organizations in Thailand for use in damage estimation, relief efforts, and damage mitigation. More recently, this sensorweb structure has been used to request imagery, access imagery, and process high-resolution (several m to 30m), targetable asset imagery from commercial assets including Worldview-2, Ikonos, Radarsat-2, Landsat-7, and Geo-Eye-1. We describe the overall sensorweb framework as well as new workflows and products made possible via these extensions.

  13. High Resolution Flash Flood Forecasting Using a Wireless Sensor Network in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bartos, M. D.; Kerkez, B.; Noh, S.; Seo, D. J.

    2017-12-01

    In this study, we develop and evaluate a high resolution urban flash flood monitoring system using a wireless sensor network (WSN), a real-time rainfall-runoff model, and spatially-explicit radar rainfall predictions. Flooding is the leading cause of natural disaster fatalities in the US, with flash flooding in particular responsible for a majority of flooding deaths. While many riverine flood models have been operationalized into early warning systems, there is currently no model that is capable of reliably predicting flash floods in urban areas. Urban flash floods are particularly difficult to model due to a lack of rainfall and runoff data at appropriate scales. To address this problem, we develop a wide-area flood-monitoring wireless sensor network for the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and use this network to characterize rainfall-runoff response over multiple heterogeneous catchments. First, we deploy a network of 22 wireless sensor nodes to collect real-time stream stage measurements over catchments ranging from 2-80 km2 in size. Next, we characterize the rainfall-runoff response of each catchment by combining stream stage data with gage and radar-based precipitation measurements. Finally, we demonstrate the potential for real-time flash flood prediction by joining the derived rainfall-runoff models with real-time radar rainfall predictions. We find that runoff response is highly heterogeneous among catchments, with large variabilities in runoff response detected even among nearby gages. However, when spatially-explicit rainfall fields are included, spatial variability in runoff response is largely captured. This result highlights the importance of increased spatial coverage for flash flood prediction.

  14. An Approach for Real-time Levee Health Monitoring Using Signal Processing Methods

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pyayt, A.L.; Kozionov, A.P.; Mokhov, I.I.; Lang, B.; Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Sloot, P.M.A.

    2013-01-01

    We developed a levee health monitoring system within the UrbanFlood project funded under the EU 7th Framework Programme. A novel real-time levee health assessment Artificial Intelligence system is developed using data-driven methods. The system is implemented in the UrbanFlood early warning system.

  15. Return period assessment of urban pluvial floods through modelling of rainfall–flood response

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tuyls, Damian Murla; Thorndahl, Søren Liedtke; Rasmussen, Michael Robdrup

    2018-01-01

    Intense rainfall in urban areas can often generate severe flood impacts. Consequently, it is crucial to design systems to minimize potential flood damages. Traditional, simple design of urban drainage systems assumes agreement between rainfall return period and its consequent flood return period......; however, this does not always apply. Hydraulic infrastructures found in urban drainage systems can increase system heterogeneity and perturb the impact of severe rainfall response. In this study, a surface flood return period assessment was carried out at Lystrup (Denmark), which has received the impact...... of flooding in recent years. A 35 years' rainfall dataset together with a coupled 1D/2D surface and network model was used to analyse and assess flood return period response. Results show an ambiguous relation between rainfall and flood return periods indicating that linear rainfall–runoff relationships will...

  16. Identification and classification of Serbia's historic floods

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Prohaska Stevan

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available River flooding in Serbia is a natural phenomenon which largely exceeds the scope of water management and hydraulic engineering, and has considerable impact on the development of Serbian society. Today, the importance and value of areas threatened by floods are among the key considerations of sustainable development. As a result, flood protection techniques and procedures need to be continually refined and updated, following innovations in the fields of science and technology. Knowledge of high flows is key for sizing hydraulic structures and for gauging the cost-effectiveness and safety of the component structures of flood protection systems. However, sizing of hydraulic structures based on computed high flows does not ensure absolute safety; there is a residual flood risk and a risk of structural failure, if a flood exceeds computed levels. In hydrological practice, such floods are often referred to as historic/loads. The goal of this paper is to present a calculation procedure for the objective identification of historic floods, using long, multiple-year series of data on high flows of natural watercourses in Serbia. At its current stage of development, the calculation procedure is based on maximum annual discharges recorded at key monitoring stations of the Hydro-Meteorological Service of Serbia (HMS Serbia. When applied, the procedure results in the identification of specific historic maximum stages/floods (if any at all gauge sites included in the analysis. The probabilistic theory is then applied to assess the statistical significance of each identified historic flood and to classify the historic flood, as appropriate. At the end of the paper, the results of the applied methodology are shown in tabular and graphic form for various Serbian rivers. All identified historic floods are ranked based on their probability of occurrence (i.e., return period.

  17. Strengthening flood warning systems: the benefits of encouraging social preparedness

    Science.gov (United States)

    Girons Lopez, Marc; Di Baldassarre, Giuliano; Seibert, Jan

    2017-04-01

    Flood warning and response have normally been focused on the technical aspects and disregarded the connections and feedbacks between the hydrological and social dimensions. An increasing body of research, however, points at the importance of considering socio-hydrological aspects to improve flood damage mitigation. One of the key factors is the preparedness of the public and first responders during flood situations, which is influenced by many behavioural traits such as perceived benefits, risk awareness, or denial. In this study, we investigate the impact of social preparedness on the efficiency of flood early warning systems by using the recency of flood experience as a proxy for social preparedness. To this end, we developed a stylised model and a synthetic data-set to perform a hypothetical analysis. The main findings point to the importance of social preparedness for flood loss mitigation, especially when the technical forecasting and warning capabilities are limited. More specifically, efforts to promote and preserve social preparedness may help to reduce disaster-induced losses by almost one half. The findings from this study provide insights into the importance of considering social preparedness in decision-making for disaster risk reduction.

  18. Improving Global Flood Forecasting using Satellite Detected Flood Extent

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Revilla Romero, B.

    2016-01-01

    Flooding is a natural global phenomenon but in many cases is exacerbated by human activity. Although flooding generally affects humans in a negative way, bringing death, suffering, and economic impacts, it also has potentially beneficial effects. Early flood warning and forecasting systems, as well

  19. Towards modelling flood protection investment as a coupled human and natural system

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Connell, P. E.; O'Donnell, G.

    2014-01-01

    Due to a number of recent high-profile flood events and the apparent threat from global warming, governments and their agencies are under pressure to make proactive investments to protect people living in floodplains. However, adopting a proactive approach as a universal strategy is not affordable. It has been argued that delaying expensive and essentially irreversible capital decisions could be a prudent strategy in situations with high future uncertainty. This paper firstly uses Monte Carlo simulation to explore the performance of proactive and reactive investment strategies using a rational cost-benefit approach in a natural system with varying levels of persistence/interannual variability in annual maximum floods. It is found that, as persistence increases, there is a change in investment strategy optimality from proactive to reactive. This could have implications for investment strategies under the increasingly variable climate that is expected with global warming. As part of the emerging holistic approaches to flood risk management, there is increasing emphasis on stakeholder participation in determining where and when flood protection investments are made, and so flood risk management is becoming more people-centred. As a consequence, multiple actors are involved in the decision-making process, and the social sciences are assuming an increasingly important role in flood risk management. There is a need for modelling approaches which can couple the natural and human system elements. It is proposed that coupled human and natural system (CHANS) modelling could play an important role in understanding the motivations, actions and influence of citizens and institutions and how these impact on the effective delivery of flood protection investment. A framework for using agent-based modelling of human activities leading to flood investments is outlined, and some of the challenges associated with implementation are discussed.

  20. Risk-Based Evaluation of Flood Warning and Preparedness Systems. Volume 2 - Technical

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Haimes, Yacov Y

    1996-01-01

    ... for both structural and nonstructural measures. The unifing theme of these results is that the design and evaluation of structural and nonstructural measures for flood mitigation, including flood warning and preparedness systems, is an integrative...

  1. September 2013 Storm and Flood Assessment Report

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Walterscheid, J. C. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

    2015-12-21

    Between September 10 and 17, 2013, New Mexico and Colorado received a historically large amount of precipitation (Figure 1). This report assesses the damage caused by flooding along with estimated costs to repair the damage at Los Alamos National Laboratory (the Laboratory) on the Pajarito Plateau. Los Alamos County, New Mexico, received between 200% and 600% of the normal precipitation for this time period (Figure 2), and the Laboratory received approximately 450% percent of its average precipitation for September (Figure 3). As a result, the Laboratory was inundated with rain, including the extremely large, greater-than-1000-yr return period event that occurred between September 12 and 13 (Table 1). With saturated antecedent soil conditions from the September 10 storm, when the September 12 to September 13 storm hit, the flooding was disastrous to the Laboratory’s environmental infrastructure, including access roads, gage stations, watershed controls, control measures installed under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit (hereafter, the Individual Permit), and groundwater monitoring wells (Figures 4 through 21). From September 16 to October 1, 2013, the Laboratory completed field assessments of environmental infrastructure and generated descriptions and estimates of the damage, which are presented in spreadsheets in Attachments 1 to 4 of this report. Section 2 of this report contains damage assessments by watershed, including access roads, gage stations, watershed controls, and control measures installed under the Individual Permit. Section 3 contains damage assessments of monitoring wells by the groundwater monitoring groups as established in the Interim Facility-Wide Groundwater Monitoring Plan for Monitoring Year 2014. Section 4 addresses damage and loss of automated samplers. Section 5 addresses sediment sampling needs, and Section 6 is the summary of estimated recovery costs from the significant rain and flooding during September 2013.

  2. Spatio-temporal variation of fish taxonomic composition in a South-East Asian flood-pulse system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kong, Heng; Chevalier, Mathieu; Laffaille, Pascal; Lek, Sovan

    2017-01-01

    The Tonle Sap Lake (TSL) is a flood-pulse system. It is the largest natural lake in South-East Asia and constitutes one of the largest fisheries over the world, supporting the livelihood of million peoples. Nonetheless, the Mekong River Basin is changing rapidly due to accelerating water infrastructure development (hydropower, irrigation, flood control, and water supply) and climate change, bringing considerable modifications to the annual flood-pulse of the TSL. Such modifications are expected to have strong impacts on fish biodiversity and abundance. This paper aims to characterize the spatio-temporal variations of fish taxonomic composition and to highlights the underlying determinants of these variations. For this purpose, we used data collected from a community catch monitoring program conducted at six sites during 141 weeks, covering two full hydrological cycles. For each week, we estimated beta diversity as the total variance of the site-by-species community matrix and partitioned it into Local Contribution to Beta Diversity (LCBD) and Species Contribution to Beta Diversity (SCBD). We then performed multiple linear regressions to determine whether species richness, species abundances and water level explained the temporal variation in the contribution of site and species to beta diversity. Our results indicate strong temporal variation of beta diversity due to differential contributions of sites and species to the spatial variation of fish taxonomic composition. We further found that the direction, the shape and the relative effect of species richness, abundances and water level on temporal variation in LCBD and SCBD values greatly varied among sites, thus suggesting spatial variation in the processes leading to temporal variation in community composition. Overall, our results suggest that fish taxonomic composition is not homogeneously distributed over space and time and is likely to be impacted in the future if the flood-pulse dynamic of the system is

  3. A Review on Applications of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS in Water Resources and Flood Risk Management

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xianwei Wang

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available Water is one of the most critical natural resources that maintain the ecosystem and support people’s daily life. Pressures on water resources and disaster management are rising primarily due to the unequal spatial and temporal distribution of water resources and pollution, and also partially due to our poor knowledge about the distribution of water resources and poor management of their usage. Remote sensing provides critical data for mapping water resources, measuring hydrological fluxes, monitoring drought and flooding inundation, while geographic information systems (GIS provide the best tools for water resources, drought and flood risk management. This special issue presents the best practices, cutting-edge technologies and applications of remote sensing, GIS and hydrological models for water resource mapping, satellite rainfall measurements, runoff simulation, water body and flood inundation mapping, and risk management. The latest technologies applied include 3D surface model analysis and visualization of glaciers, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV video image classification for turfgrass mapping and irrigation planning, ground penetration radar for soil moisture estimation, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM satellite rainfall measurements, storm hyetography analysis, rainfall runoff and urban flooding simulation, and satellite radar and optical image classification for urban water bodies and flooding inundation. The application of those technologies is expected to greatly relieve the pressures on water resources and allow better mitigation of and adaptation to the disastrous impact of droughts and flooding.

  4. Flood Inundation Mapping in the Logone Floodplain from Multi Temporal Landsat ETM+Imagery

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jung, Hahn Chul; Alsdorf, Douglas E.; Moritz, Mark; Lee, Hyongki; Vassolo, Sara

    2011-01-01

    Yearly flooding in the Logone floodplain makes an impact on agricultural, pastoral, and fishery systems in the Lake Chad Basin. Since the flooding extent and depth are highly variable, flood inundation mapping helps us make better use of water resources and prevent flood hazards in the Logone floodplain. The flood maps are generated from 33 multi temporal Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) during three years 2006 to 2008. Flooded area is classified using a short-wave infrared band whereas open water is classified by Iterative Self-organizing Data Analysis (ISODATA) clustering. The maximum flooding extent in the study area increases up to approximately 5.8K km2 in late October 2008. The study also provides strong correlation of the flooding extents with water height variations in both the floodplain and the river based on a second polynomial regression model. The water heights are from ENIVSAT altimetry in the floodplain and gauge measurements in the river. Coefficients of determination between flooding extents and water height variations are greater than 0.91 with 4 to 36 days in phase lag. Floodwater drains back to the river and to the northeast during the recession period in December and January. The study supports understanding of the Logone floodplain dynamics in detail of spatial pattern and size of the flooding extent and assists the flood monitoring and prediction systems in the catchment.

  5. Social media for disaster response during floods

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eilander, D.; van de Vries, C.; Baart, F.; van Swol, R.; Wagemaker, J.; van Loenen, A.

    2015-12-01

    During floods it is difficult to obtain real-time accurate information about the extent and severity of the hazard. This information is very important for disaster risk reduction management and crisis relief organizations. Currently, real-time information is derived from few sources such as field reports, traffic camera's, satellite images and areal images. However, getting a real-time and accurate picture of the situation on the ground remains difficult. At the same time, people affected by natural hazards increasingly share their observations and their needs through digital media. Unlike conventional monitoring systems, Twitter data contains a relatively large number of real-time ground truth observations representing both physical hazard characteristics and hazard impacts. In the city of Jakarta, Indonesia, the intensity of unique flood related tweets during a flood event, peaked at almost 900 tweets per minute during floods in early 2015. Flood events around the world in 2014/2015 yielded large numbers of flood related tweets: from Philippines (85.000) to Pakistan (82.000) to South-Korea (50.000) to Detroit (20.000). The challenge here is to filter out useful content from this cloud of data, validate these observations and convert them to readily usable information. In Jakarta, flood related tweets often contain information about the flood depth. In a pilot we showed that this type of information can be used for real-time mapping of the flood extent by plotting these observations on a Digital Elevation Model. Uncertainties in the observations were taken into account by assigning a probability to each observation indicating its likelihood to be correct based on statistical analysis of the total population of tweets. The resulting flood maps proved to be correct for about 75% of the neighborhoods in Jakarta. Further cross-validation of flood related tweets against (hydro-) meteorological data is to likely improve the skill of the method.

  6. Socio-economic Impact Analysis for Near Real-Time Flood Detection in the Lower Mekong River Basin

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oddo, P.; Ahamed, A.; Bolten, J. D.

    2017-12-01

    Flood events pose a severe threat to communities in the Lower Mekong River Basin. The combination of population growth, urbanization, and economic development exacerbate the impacts of these flood events. Flood damage assessments are frequently used to quantify the economic losses in the wake of storms. These assessments are critical for understanding the effects of flooding on the local population, and for informing decision-makers about future risks. Remote sensing systems provide a valuable tool for monitoring flood conditions and assessing their severity more rapidly than traditional post-event evaluations. The frequency and severity of extreme flood events are projected to increase, further illustrating the need for improved flood monitoring and impact analysis. In this study we implement a socio-economic damage model into a decision support tool with near real-time flood detection capabilities (NASA's Project Mekong). Surface water extent for current and historical floods is found using multispectral Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250-meter imagery and the spectral Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) signatures of permanent water bodies (MOD44W). Direct and indirect damages to populations, infrastructure, and agriculture are assessed using the 2011 Southeast Asian flood as a case study. Improved land cover and flood depth assessments result in a more refined understanding of losses throughout the Mekong River Basin. Results suggest that rapid initial estimates of flood impacts can provide valuable information to governments, international agencies, and disaster responders in the wake of extreme flood events.

  7. An Accelerometer-Based Sensor System for Real-Time Bridge Scour Monitoring

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yi-Jie Hsieh

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available With the fast global climate change, many bridge structures are facing the nature disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The damage of bridges can cause the severe cost of human life and property. The heavy rain brought by the typhoon in July and August in Taiwan causes the bridge scour and makes the damage or collapse for bridges. Since scour is one of the major causes for bridge failure, how to monitor the bridge scour becomes an important task in Taiwan. This paper presents a real-time bridge scour monitoring system based on accelerometer sensors. The presented sensor network consists of a gateway node and under-water sensor nodes with the wired RS-485 communication protocol. The proposed master-slave architecture of the bridge scour monitoring system owns the scalability and flexibility and is setup in the field currently. The experimental results in the field show the presented sensor system can detect the bridge scour effectively with our proposed scour detection algorithm in real time.

  8. Flood Protection Decision Making Within a Coupled Human and Natural System

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Donnell, Greg; O'Connell, Enda

    2013-04-01

    Due to the perceived threat from climate change, prediction under changing climatic and hydrological conditions has become a dominant theme of hydrological research. Much of this research has been climate model-centric, in which GCM/RCM climate projections have been used to drive hydrological system models to explore potential impacts that should inform adaptation decision-making. However, adaptation fundamentally involves how humans may respond to increasing flood and drought hazards by changing their strategies, activities and behaviours which are coupled in complex ways to the natural systems within which they live and work. Humans are major agents of change in hydrological systems, and representing human activities and behaviours in coupled human and natural hydrological system models is needed to gain insight into the complex interactions that take place, and to inform adaptation decision-making. Governments and their agencies are under pressure to make proactive investments to protect people living in floodplains from the perceived increasing flood hazard. However, adopting this as a universal strategy everywhere is not affordable, particularly in times of economic stringency and given uncertainty about future climatic conditions. It has been suggested that the assumption of stationarity, which has traditionally been invoked in making hydrological risk assessments, is no longer tenable. However, before the assumption of hydrologic nonstationarity is accepted, the ability to cope with the uncertain impacts of global warming on water management via the operational assumption of hydrologic stationarity should be carefully examined. Much can be learned by focussing on natural climate variability and its inherent changes in assessing alternative adaptation strategies. A stationary stochastic multisite flood hazard model has been developed that can exhibit increasing variability/persistence in annual maximum floods, starting with the traditional assumption of

  9. Flood AI: An Intelligent Systems for Discovery and Communication of Disaster Knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, I.; Sermet, M. Y.

    2017-12-01

    Communities are not immune from extreme events or natural disasters that can lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and public. Improving resilience to better prepare, plan, recover, and adapt to disasters is critical to reduce the impacts of extreme events. The National Research Council (NRC) report discusses the topic of how to increase resilience to extreme events through a vision of resilient nation in the year 2030. The report highlights the importance of data, information, gaps and knowledge challenges that needs to be addressed, and suggests every individual to access the risk and vulnerability information to make their communities more resilient. This project presents an intelligent system, Flood AI, for flooding to improve societal preparedness by providing a knowledge engine using voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing based on a generalized ontology for disasters with a primary focus on flooding. The knowledge engine utilizes the flood ontology and concepts to connect user input to relevant knowledge discovery channels on flooding by developing a data acquisition and processing framework utilizing environmental observations, forecast models, and knowledge bases. Communication channels of the framework includes web-based systems, agent-based chat bots, smartphone applications, automated web workflows, and smart home devices, opening the knowledge discovery for flooding to many unique use cases.

  10. Using Cosmic-Ray Neutron Probes to Monitor Landscape Scale Soil Water Content in Mixed Land Use Agricultural Systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Franz, Trenton E.; Wahbi, Ammar; Weltin, Georg; Heng, Lee; Dercon, Gerd; Vreugdenhi, Mariette; Oismueller, Markus; Strauss, Peter; Desilets, Darin

    2016-01-01

    With an ever-increasing demand for natural resources and the societal need to understand and predict natural disasters such as flood, soil water content (SWC) observations remain a critical variable to monitor in order to optimally allocate resources, establish early warning systems, and improve weather forecasts. However, routine agricultural production practices of soil cultivation, planting, and harvest make the operation and maintenance of direct contact point sensors for long-term monitoring a challenging task. In this work, we used Cosmic-Ray Neutron Probe (CRNP) to monitor landscape average SWC in a mixed agricultural land use system in northeast Austria since December 2013.

  11. System robustness analysis in support of flood and drought risk management

    CERN Document Server

    Mens, MJP

    2015-01-01

    Floods and droughts have an increasing impact on societies worldwide. It is unlikely that the provision of flood protection infrastructure and reservoirs will eliminate this problem, especially as extreme events are expected to increase in probability and magnitude as a result of climate change. For this reason, the focus of water management has shifted to a risk-based approach in recent years; but this also has its limitations.This book examines system robustness as a new perspective on flood and drought risk management. The concept of robustness is familiar from other areas, such as engineer

  12. Assessment of flood-induced changes of phytoplankton along a river-floodplain system using the morpho-functional approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mihaljević, Melita; Spoljarić, Dubravka; Stević, Filip; Zuna Pfeiffer, Tanja

    2013-10-01

    In this research, we aimed to find out how the differences in hydrological connectivity between the main river channel and adjacent floodplain influence the changes in phytoplankton community structure along a river-floodplain system. The research was performed in the River Danube floodplain (Croatian river section) in the period 2008-2009 characterised by different flooding pattern on an annual time scale. By utilising the morpho-functional approach and multivariate analyses, the flood-derived structural changes of phytoplankton were analysed. The lake stability during the isolation phase triggered the specific pattern of morpho-functional groups (MFG) which were characterised by cyanobacterial species achieving very high biomass. Adversely, the high water turbulence in the lake during the frequent and extreme flooding led to evident similarity between lake and river assemblages. Besides different diatom species (groups of small and large centrics and pennates), which are the most abundant representatives in the river phytoplankton, many other groups such as cryptophytes and colonial phytomonads appeared to indicate altered conditions in the floodplain driven by flooding. Having different functional properties, small centric diatom taxa sorted to only one MFG cannot clearly reflect environmental changes that are shown by the species-level pattern. Disadvantages in using the MFG approach highlight that it is still necessary to combine it with taxonomical approach in monitoring of phytoplankton in the river-floodplain ecosystems.

  13. A critical approach to some new ideas about the Dutch flood risk system

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rijcken, T.

    2015-01-01

    Decisions on measures to improve a flood risk system are in part supported by general ideas about how the system works and should work. After the completion of the Dutch Delta Works around 1990, such new ideas regarding flood risk emerged. Some of these may be appealing at first, but appear

  14. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma - High-Resolution Flood Mapping and Monitoring from Sentinel SAR with the Depolarization Reduction Algorithm for Global Observations of InundatioN (DRAGON)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nghiem, S. V.; Brakenridge, G. R.; Nguyen, D. T.

    2017-12-01

    Hurricane Harvey inflicted historical catastrophic flooding across extensive regions around Houston and southeast Texas after making landfall on 25 August 2017. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requested urgent supports for flood mapping and monitoring in an emergency response to the extreme flood situation. An innovative satellite remote sensing method, called the Depolarization Reduction Algorithm for Global Observations of inundatioN (DRAGON), has been developed and implemented for use with Sentinel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite data at a resolution of 10 meters to identify, map, and monitor inundation including pre-existing water bodies and newly flooded areas. Results from this new method are hydrologically consistent and have been verified with known surface waters (e.g., coastal ocean, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, etc.), with clear-sky high-resolution WorldView images (where waves can be seen on surface water in inundated areas within a small spatial coverage), and with other flood maps from the consortium of Global Flood Partnership derived from multiple satellite datasets (including clear-sky Landsat and MODIS at lower resolutions). Figure 1 is a high-resolution (4K UHD) image of a composite inundation map for the region around Rosharon (in Brazoria County, south of Houston, Texas). This composite inundation map reveals extensive flooding on 29 August 2017 (four days after Hurricane Harvey made landfall), and the inundation was still persistent in most of the west and south of Rosharon one week later (5 September 2017) while flooding was reduced in the east of Rosharon. Hurricane Irma brought flooding to a number of areas in Florida. As of 10 September 2017, Sentinel SAR flood maps reveal inundation in the Florida Panhandle and over lowland surfaces on several islands in the Florida Keys. However, Sentinel SAR results indicate that flooding along the Florida coast was not extreme despite Irma was a Category-5 hurricane that might

  15. Dynamic flood webmapping: an operational and cost-limited tool to optimize crisis management

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Strappazzon Quentin

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Due to strong climate variations and the multiplication of flood events, protection based strategies are no longer sufficient to handle a watershed scale crisis. Monitoring, prediction and alert procedures are required to ensure effective crisis and post-crisis management which explains the recent interest for real time predictions systems. Nevertheless, this kind of system, when fully implemented with in-situ monitoring network, meteorological forecast inputs, hydrological and hydraulic modelling and flood mapping, are often postponed or cancelled because of both their cost and time scale. That is why Prolog Ingénierie and the SyAGE have developed, as an economical and technical sustainable alternative, a tool providing shared access to a real time mapping of current and predicted flooded areas along with a dynamic listing of exposed stakes (such as public buildings, sensible infrastructures, environmental buildings, roads. The update of these maps is performed from the combination of predicted water levels in the river and a flood envelop library (based on 1D/2D hydraulic model results for a wide panel of discharges and hydraulic structures states conditions. This tool has already been implemented on the downstream part of the Yerres River, a tributary of the Seine River in France.

  16. Development and Evaluation of an Integrated Hydrological Modeling Framework for Monitoring and Understanding Floods and Droughts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Z. L.; Wu, W. Y.; Lin, P.; Maidment, D. R.

    2017-12-01

    system is appropriate for monitoring and studying floods and droughts. Directions for future research will be outlined and discussed.

  17. Flooding and Flood Management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brooks, K.N.; Fallon, J.D.; Lorenz, D.L.; Stark, J.R.; Menard, Jason; Easter, K.W.; Perry, Jim

    2011-01-01

    Floods result in great human disasters globally and nationally, causing an average of $4 billion of damages each year in the United States. Minnesota has its share of floods and flood damages, and the state has awarded nearly $278 million to local units of government for flood mitigation projects through its Flood Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Since 1995, flood mitigation in the Red River Valley has exceeded $146 million. Considerable local and state funding has been provided to manage and mitigate problems of excess stormwater in urban areas, flooding of farmlands, and flood damages at road crossings. The cumulative costs involved with floods and flood mitigation in Minnesota are not known precisely, but it is safe to conclude that flood mitigation is a costly business. This chapter begins with a description of floods in Minneosta to provide examples and contrasts across the state. Background material is presented to provide a basic understanding of floods and flood processes, predication, and management and mitigation. Methods of analyzing and characterizing floods are presented because they affect how we respond to flooding and can influence relevant practices. The understanding and perceptions of floods and flooding commonly differ among those who work in flood forecasting, flood protection, or water resource mamnagement and citizens and businesses affected by floods. These differences can become magnified following a major flood, pointing to the need for better understanding of flooding as well as common language to describe flood risks and the uncertainty associated with determining such risks. Expectations of accurate and timely flood forecasts and our ability to control floods do not always match reality. Striving for clarity is important in formulating policies that can help avoid recurring flood damages and costs.

  18. Continental and global scale flood forecasting systems

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Emerton, Rebecca E.; Stephens, Elisabeth M.; Pappenberger, Florian; Pagano, Thomas P.; Weerts, A.H.; Wood, A.; Salamon, Peter; Brown, James D.; Hjerdt, Niclas; Donnelly, Chantal; Baugh, Calum A.; Cloke, Hannah L.

    2016-01-01

    Floods are the most frequent of natural disasters, affecting millions of people across the globe every year. The anticipation and forecasting of floods at the global scale is crucial to preparing for severe events and providing early awareness where local flood models and warning services may not

  19. Urban pluvial flood prediction

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Thorndahl, Søren Liedtke; Nielsen, Jesper Ellerbæk; Jensen, David Getreuer

    2016-01-01

    Flooding produced by high-intensive local rainfall and drainage system capacity exceedance can have severe impacts in cities. In order to prepare cities for these types of flood events – especially in the future climate – it is valuable to be able to simulate these events numerically both...... historically and in real-time. There is a rather untested potential in real-time prediction of urban floods. In this paper radar data observations with different spatial and temporal resolution, radar nowcasts of 0–2 h lead time, and numerical weather models with lead times up to 24 h are used as inputs...... to an integrated flood and drainage systems model in order to investigate the relative difference between different inputs in predicting future floods. The system is tested on a small town Lystrup in Denmark, which has been flooded in 2012 and 2014. Results show it is possible to generate detailed flood maps...

  20. Experimental study of the passive flooding system in the WWER-1000 reactor

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Malyshev, A.B.; Efanov, A.D.; Kalyakin, S.G.

    2002-01-01

    The design solution of the passive flooding system in the WWER-1000 reactor core with the V-392 reactor facility and the scheme of the GE-2 large-scale thermohydraulic stand for substantiation of its functions are presented. The proposals, improving the efficiency of the system are developed on the basis of the experimental studies on the equipment input-output operational characteristics and the recommendations on the substantiation of the function of the reactor core flooding system are given [ru

  1. A Methodology to Define Flood Resilience

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tourbier, J.

    2012-04-01

    structures such as levies, demountable structures that are partially installed, temporary structures that are removable, as well as dry- and` wet floodproofing of structures to meet construction standards to deflect or resist pressure without breaking. (3)SOCIAL FLOOD RESILIENCE referring to the building of robust institutions (including NGO's) and governance systems that underpin our capacity to prepare for and cope with uncertainty, change, and disasters when they occur. (4) FLOOD RISK RESILIENCE implies the ability to withstand and recover from crises through financial insurance assistance and through assistance by governmental institutions, including the communication of information on floodproofing steps that individuals can take on their own. Within these four levels considerations are outlined to form categories within a matrix as a way to set planning priorities by considering existing conditions, to formulate goals and to develop concepts. The matrix can function as indicators of success for a pre-and post-project assessment. A clear formulation of goals is an essential first step in the planning process, and a pre-requisite for the monitoring of performance. Policy makers would be involved in an active policy process, which has been called "a learning and action alliance to build capacity for flood resilience.

  2. Urban flood return period assessment through rainfall-flood response modelling

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Murla, Damian; Thorndahl, Søren Liedtke

    Intense rainfall can often cause severe floods, especially in urbanized areas, where population density or large impermeable areas are found. In this context, floods can generate a direct impact in a social-environmental-economic viewpoint. Traditionally, in design of Urban Drainage Systems (UDS......), correlation between return period (RP) of a given rainfall and RP of its consequent flood has been assumed to be linear (e.g.DS/EN752 (2008)). However, this is not always the case. Complex UDS, where diverse hydraulic infrastructures are often found, increase the heterogeneity of system response, which may...... cause an alteration of the mentioned correlation. Consequently, reliability on future urban planning, design and resilience against floods may be also affected by this misassumption. In this study, an assessment of surface flood RP across rainfall RP has been carried out at Lystrup, a urbanized...

  3. Introduction to SNPP/VIIRS Flood Mapping Software Version 1.0

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, S.; Sun, D.; Goldberg, M.; Sjoberg, W.; Santek, D.; Hoffman, J.

    2017-12-01

    Near real-time satellite-derived flood maps are invaluable to river forecasters and decision-makers for disaster monitoring and relief efforts. With support from the JPSS (Joint Polar Satellite System) Proving Ground and Risk Reduction (PGRR) Program, flood detection software has been developed using Suomi-NPP/VIIRS (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership/Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) imagery to automatically generate near real-time flood maps for National Weather Service (NWS) River Forecast Centers (RFC) in the USA. The software, which is called VIIRS NOAA GMU Flood Version 1.0 (hereafter referred to as VNG Flood V1.0), consists of a series of algorithms that include water detection, cloud shadow removal, terrain shadow removal, minor flood detection, water fraction retrieval, and floodwater determination. The software is designed for flood detection in any land region between 80°S and 80°N, and it has been running routinely with direct broadcast SNPP/VIIRS data at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW/SSEC) and the Geographic Information Network of Alaska at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks (UAF/GINA) since 2014. Near real-time flood maps are distributed via the Unidata Local Data Manager (LDM), reviewed by river forecasters in AWIPS-II (the second generation of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System) and applied in flood operations. Initial feedback from operational forecasters on the product accuracy and performance has been largely positive. The software capability has also been extended to areas outside of the USA via a case-driven mode to detect major floods all over the world. Offline validation efforts include the visual inspection of over 10,000 VIIRS false-color composite images, an inter-comparison with MODIS automatic flood products and a quantitative evaluation using Landsat imagery. The steady performance from the 3-year routine process and the promising validation results

  4. A new French flash flood warning service

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    de Saint-Aubin Céline

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The French State services in charge of flood forecasting supervise about 22,000 km among the 120,000 km of the French rivers within a warning procedure called Vigilance Crues (http://www.vigicrues.gouv.fr. Some recent dramatic flood events on small watershed not covered by Vigilance Crues highlight the need for a new warning procedure to anticipate violent flash floods that regularly affect rapid river-basins. Thus the concept emerged of an automatic warning service specifically dedicated to local crisis managers. This service will be less elaborated than Vigilance Crues, probably with false alarms and missed events sometimes, but it will deliver a first information. The generation of the warning is based on a simple rainfall-runoff hydrological model developed by Irstea on all French rivers, fed with radar-gauge rainfall grids provided by Meteo-France. Every fifteen minutes, the hydrological model estimates the discharges on the rivers eligible to the service and determine if certain thresholds corresponding to a high or very high flood are likely to be exceeded. The last step of the real-time system is to determine which municipalities are concerned with flood risk and send them an automatic warning by voice call, optionally by sms or email. A specific web interface is available for users to monitor the evolution of the flood risk on maps that are updated every 15 minutes. This new flash flood warning service will be operational early 2017 as a free service for about 8,000 French municipalities.

  5. The effect of floods on anemia among reproductive age women in Afghanistan.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oskorouchi, Hamid Reza; Nie, Peng; Sousa-Poza, Alfonso

    2018-01-01

    This study uses biomarker information from the 2013 National Nutrition Survey Afghanistan and satellite precipitation driven modeling results from the Global Flood Monitoring System to analyze how floods affect the probability of anemia in Afghan women of reproductive age (15-49). In addition to establishing a causal relation between the two by exploiting the quasi-random variation of floods in different districts and periods, the analysis demonstrates that floods have a significant positive effect on the probability of anemia through two possible transmission mechanisms. The first is a significant effect on inflammation, probably related to water borne diseases carried by unsafe drinking water, and the second is a significant negative effect on retinol concentrations. Because the effect of floods on anemia remains significant even after we control for anemia's most common causes, we argue that the condition may also be affected by elevated levels of psychological stress.

  6. Use of a Smartphone for Collecting Data on River Discharge and Communication of Flood Risk.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pena-Haro, S.; Lüthi, B.; Philippe, T.

    2015-12-01

    Although many developed countries have well-established systems for river monitoring and flood early warning systems, the population affected in developing countries by flood events is unsettled. Even more, future climate development is likely to increase the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events and therefore bigger impacts on the population can be expected.There are different types of flood forecasting systems, some are based on hydrologic models fed with rainfall predictions and observed river levels. Flood hazard maps are also used to increase preparedness in case of an extreme event, however these maps are static since they do not incorporate daily changing conditions on river stages. However, and especially in developing countries, data on river stages are scarce. Some of the reasons are that traditional fixed monitoring systems do not scale in terms of costs, repair is difficult as well as operation and maintenance, in addition vandalism poses additional challenges. Therefore there is a need of cheaper and easy-to-use systems for collecting information on river stage and discharge. We have developed a mobile device application for determining the water stage and discharge of open-channels (e.g. rivers, artificial channels, irrigation furrows). Via image processing the water level and surface velocity are measured, combining this information with priori knowledge on the channel geometry the discharge is estimated. River stage and discharge measurement via smart phones provides a non-intrusive, accurate and cost-effective monitoring method. No permanent installations, which can be flooded away, are needed. The only requirement is that the field of view contains two reference markers with known scale and with known position relative to the channel geometry, therefore operation and maintenance costs are very low. The other advantage of using smartphones, is that the data collected can be immediately sent via SMS to a central database. This

  7. Interpreting the impact of flood forecasts by combining policy analysis studies and flood defence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Slomp Robert

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Flood forecasting is necessary to save lives and reduce damages. Reducing damages is important to save livelihoods and to reduce the recovery time. Flood alerts should contain expected time of the event, location and extent of the event. A flood alert is not only one message but part of a rehearsed flow of information using multiple canals. First people have to accept the fact that there might be a threat and what the threat is about. People need a reference to understand the situation and be aware of possible measures they can take to assure their own safety and reduce damages. Information to the general public has to be consistent with the information used by emergency services and has to be very clear about consequences and context of possible measures (as shelter in place or preventive evacuation. Emergency services should monitor how the public is responding to adapt their communication en operation during a crisis. Flood warnings and emergency services are often coordinated by different government organisations. This is an extra handicap for having consistent information out on time for people to use. In an information based society, where everyone has twitter, email and a camera, public organisations may have to trust the public more and send out the correct information as it comes in. In the Netherlands Rijkswaterstaat, the National Water Authority and the National Public Works Department, is responsible for or involved in forecasting in case of floods, policy studies on flood risk, policy studies on maintenance, assessment and design of flood defences, elaborating rules and regulations for flood defences, advice on crisis management to the national government and for maintaining the main infrastructure in the Netherlands (high ways and water ways. The Water Management Center in the Netherlands (WMCN has developed a number of models to provide flood forecasts. WMCN is run for and by all managers of flood defences and is hosted by

  8. Systems and Sensors for Debris-flow Monitoring and Warning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lorenzo Marchi

    2008-04-01

    Full Text Available Debris flows are a type of mass movement that occurs in mountain torrents. They consist of a high concentration of solid material in water that flows as a wave with a steep front. Debris flows can be considered a phenomenon intermediate between landslides and water floods. They are amongst the most hazardous natural processes in mountainous regions and may occur under different climatic conditions. Their destructiveness is due to different factors: their capability of transporting and depositing huge amounts of solid materials, which may also reach large sizes (boulders of several cubic meters are commonly transported by debris flows, their steep fronts, which may reach several meters of height and also their high velocities. The implementation of both structural and nonstructural control measures is often required when debris flows endanger routes, urban areas and other infrastructures. Sensor networks for debris-flow monitoring and warning play an important role amongst non-structural measures intended to reduce debris-flow risk. In particular, debris flow warning systems can be subdivided into two main classes: advance warning and event warning systems. These two classes employ different types of sensors. Advance warning systems are based on monitoring causative hydrometeorological processes (typically rainfall and aim to issue a warning before a possible debris flow is triggered. Event warning systems are based on detecting debris flows when these processes are in progress. They have a much smaller lead time than advance warning ones but are also less prone to false alarms. Advance warning for debris flows employs sensors and techniques typical of meteorology and hydrology, including measuring rainfall by means of rain gauges and weather radar and monitoring water discharge in headwater streams. Event warning systems use different types of sensors, encompassing ultrasonic or radar gauges, ground vibration sensors, videocameras, avalanche

  9. Monitoring the extent of flooding : Based on a case study in Queensland

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Thompson, R.J.; Van Oosterom, P.J.M.; Zlatanova, S.; Van de Giesen, N.C.; Goulevitch, B.

    2011-01-01

    “Of droughts and flooding rains” (Dorothea Mackellar 1885-1968, “My Country”). The recent flooding in Queensland affected rural areas, mines, towns and cities including the state capital. Tracking such an event on a day-by day basis raises practical and theoretical issues. While this year’s floods

  10. Global Scale Remote Sensing Monitoring of Endorheic Lake Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scuderi, L. A.

    2010-12-01

    Semi-arid regions of the world contain thousands of endorheic lakes in large shallow basins. Due to their generally remote locations few are continuously monitored. Documentation of recent variability is essential to assessing how endorheic lakes respond to short-term meteorological conditions and longer-term decadal-scale climatic variability and is critical in determining future disturbance of hydrological regimes with respect to predicted warming and drying in the mid-latitudes. Short- and long-term departures from climatic averages, rapid environmental shifts and increased population pressures may result in significant fluctuations in the hydrologic budgets of these lakes and adversely impact endorheic lake/basin ecosystems. Information on flooding variability is also critical in estimating changes in P/E balances and on the production of exposed and easily deflated surfaces that may impact dust loading locally and regionally. In order to provide information on how these lakes respond we need to understand how entire systems respond hydrologically to different climatic inputs. This requires monitoring and analysis of regional to continental-scale systems. To date, this level of monitoring has not been achieved in an operational system. In order to assess the possibility of creating a global-scale lake inundation database we analyzed two contrasting lake systems in western North America (Mexico and New Mexico, USA) and China (Inner Mongolia). We asked two major questions: 1) is it possible to quickly and accurately quantify current lake inundation events in near real time using remote sensing? and, 2) is it possible to differentiate variable meteorological sources and resultant lake inundation responses using this type of database? With respect to these results we outline an automated lake monitoring approach using MODIS data and real-time processing systems that may provide future global monitoring capabilities.

  11. An early warning system for flash floods in hyper-arid Egypt

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cools, J.; Vanderkimpen, P.; El Afandi, G.; Abdelkhalek, A.; Fockedey, S.; El Sammany, M.; Abdallah, G.; El Bihery, M.; Bauwens, W.; Huygens, M.

    2012-02-01

    An early warning system (EWS) for flash floods has been developed for part of the Sinai peninsula of Egypt, an hyper-arid area confronted with limited availability of field data, limited understanding of the response of the wadi to rainfall, and a lack of correspondence between rainfall data and observed flash flood events. This paper shows that an EWS is not a "mission impossible" when confronted with large technical and scientific uncertainties and limited data availability. Firstly, the EWS has been developed and tested based on the best available information, this being quantitative data (field measurements, simulations and remote sensing images) complemented with qualitative "expert opinion" and local stakeholders' knowledge. Secondly, a set of essential parameters has been identified to be estimated or measured under data-poor conditions. These are: (1) an inventory of past significant rainfall and flash flood events, (2) the spatial and temporal distribution of the rainfall events and (3) transmission and infiltration losses and (4) thresholds for issuing warnings. Over a period of 30 yr (1979-2010), only 20 significant rain events have been measured. Nine of these resulted in a flash flood. Five flash floods were caused by regional storms and four by local convective storms. The results for the 2010 flash flood show that 90% of the total rainfall volume was lost to infiltration and transmission losses. Finally, it is discussed that the effectiveness of an EWS is only partially determined by technological performance. A strong institutional capacity is equally important, especially skilled staff to operate and maintain the system and clear communication pathways and emergency procedures in case of an upcoming disaster.

  12. Estimation of Internal Flooding Frequency for Screening Analysis of Flooding PSA

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Choi, Sun Yeong; Yang, Jun Eon

    2005-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to estimate the internal frequency for the quantitative screening analysis of the flooding PSA (Probabilistic Safety Assessment) with the appropriate data and estimation method. In the case of the existing flood PSA for domestic NPPs (Nuclear Power Plant), the screening analysis was performed firstly and then detailed analysis was performed for the area not screened out. For the quantitative screening analysis, the plant area based flood frequency by MLE (Maximum Likelihood Estimation) method was used, while the component based flood frequency is used for the detailed analysis. The existing quantitative screening analysis for domestic NPPs have used data from all LWRs (Light Water Reactor), namely PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) and BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) for the internal flood frequency of the auxiliary building and turbine building. However, in the case of the primary auxiliary building, the applicability of the data from all LWRs needs to be examined carefully because of the significant difference in equipments between the PWR and BWR structure. NUREG/CR-5750 suggested the Bayesian update method with Jeffrey's noninformative prior to estimate the initiating event frequency for the flood. It, however, did not describe any procedure of the flood PSA. Recently, Fleming and Lydell suggested the internal flooding frequency in the unit of the plant operation year-pipe length (in meter) by pipe size of each specific system which is susceptible to the flooding such as the service water system and the circulating water system. They used the failure rate, the rupture conditional probability given the failure to estimate the internal flooding frequency, and the Bayesian update to reduce uncertainties. To perform the quantitative screening analysis with the method, it requires pipe length by each pipe size of the specific system per each divided area to change the concept of the component based frequency to the concept of the plant area

  13. Urbanization and climate change implications in flood risk management: Developing an efficient decision support system for flood susceptibility mapping.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mahmoud, Shereif H; Gan, Thian Yew

    2018-04-26

    The effects of urbanization and climate change impact to the flood risk of two governorates in Egypt were analyzed. Non-parametric change point and trend detection algorithms were applied to the annual rainfall, rainfall anomaly, and temperature anomaly of both study sites. Next, change points and trends of the annual and monthly surface runoff data generated by the Curve Number method over 1948-2014 were also analyzed to detect the effects of urbanization on the surface runoff. Lastly, a GIS decision support system was developed to delineate flood susceptibility zones for the two governorates. The significant decline in annual rainfall and rainfall anomaly after 1994 at 8.96 and 15.3 mm/decade respectively was likely due to climate change impact, especially significant warming trend since 1976 at 0.16 °C/decade, though that could partly be attributed to rapid urbanization. Since 1970, effects of urbanization to flood risk are clear, because despite a decline in rainfall, the annual surface runoff and runoff anomaly show positive trends of 12.7 and of 14.39 mm/decade, respectively. Eleven flood contributing factors have been identified and used in mapping flood susceptibility zones of both sites. In the El-Beheira governorate, 9.2%, 17.9%, 32.3%, 28.3% and 12.3% of its area are categorized as very high, high, moderate, low and very low susceptibility to flooding, respectively. Similarly, in Alexandria governorate, 15.9%, 33.5%, 41%, 8.8% and 0.8% of its area are categorized as very high, high, moderate, low and very low susceptibility to flooding, respectively. Very high and high susceptible zones are located in the northern, northwestern and northeastern parts of the Beheira governorates, and in the northeastern and northwestern parts of Alexandria. The flood related information obtained in this study will be useful to assist mitigating potential flood damages and future land use planning of both governorates of Egypt. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All

  14. Development of flood index by characterisation of flood hydrographs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bhattacharya, Biswa; Suman, Asadusjjaman

    2015-04-01

    In recent years the world has experienced deaths, large-scale displacement of people, billions of Euros of economic damage, mental stress and ecosystem impacts due to flooding. Global changes (climate change, population and economic growth, and urbanisation) are exacerbating the severity of flooding. The 2010 floods in Pakistan and the 2011 floods in Australia and Thailand demonstrate the need for concerted action in the face of global societal and environmental changes to strengthen resilience against flooding. Due to climatological characteristics there are catchments where flood forecasting may have a relatively limited role and flood event management may have to be trusted upon. For example, in flash flood catchments, which often may be tiny and un-gauged, flood event management often depends on approximate prediction tools such as flash flood guidance (FFG). There are catchments fed largely by flood waters coming from upstream catchments, which are un-gauged or due to data sharing issues in transboundary catchments the flow of information from upstream catchment is limited. Hydrological and hydraulic modelling of these downstream catchments will never be sufficient to provide any required forecasting lead time and alternative tools to support flood event management will be required. In FFG, or similar approaches, the primary motif is to provide guidance by synthesising the historical data. We follow a similar approach to characterise past flood hydrographs to determine a flood index (FI), which varies in space and time with flood magnitude and its propagation. By studying the variation of the index the pockets of high flood risk, requiring attention, can be earmarked beforehand. This approach can be very useful in flood risk management of catchments where information about hydro-meteorological variables is inadequate for any forecasting system. This paper presents the development of FI and its application to several catchments including in Kentucky in the USA

  15. A Bayesian-Based System to Assess Wave-Driven Flooding Hazards on Coral Reef-Lined Coasts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pearson, S. G.; Storlazzi, C. D.; van Dongeren, A. R.; Tissier, M. F. S.; Reniers, A. J. H. M.

    2017-12-01

    Many low-elevation, coral reef-lined, tropical coasts are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, sea level rise, and wave-induced flooding. The considerable morphological diversity of these coasts and the variability of the hydrodynamic forcing that they are exposed to make predicting wave-induced flooding a challenge. A process-based wave-resolving hydrodynamic model (XBeach Non-Hydrostatic, "XBNH") was used to create a large synthetic database for use in a "Bayesian Estimator for Wave Attack in Reef Environments" (BEWARE), relating incident hydrodynamics and coral reef geomorphology to coastal flooding hazards on reef-lined coasts. Building on previous work, BEWARE improves system understanding of reef hydrodynamics by examining the intrinsic reef and extrinsic forcing factors controlling runup and flooding on reef-lined coasts. The Bayesian estimator has high predictive skill for the XBNH model outputs that are flooding indicators, and was validated for a number of available field cases. It was found that, in order to accurately predict flooding hazards, water depth over the reef flat, incident wave conditions, and reef flat width are the most essential factors, whereas other factors such as beach slope and bed friction due to the presence or absence of corals are less important. BEWARE is a potentially powerful tool for use in early warning systems or risk assessment studies, and can be used to make projections about how wave-induced flooding on coral reef-lined coasts may change due to climate change.Plain Language SummaryLow-lying tropical coasts fronted by coral reefs are threatened by the effects of climate change, sea level rise, and flooding caused by waves. However, the reefs on these coasts differ widely in their shape, size, and physical characteristics; the wave and water level conditions affecting these coastlines also vary in space and time. These factors make it difficult to predict flooding caused by waves along coral reef-lined coasts. We

  16. Assessment of Flood Disaster Impacts in Cambodia: Implications for Rapid Disaster Response

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ahamed, Aakash; Bolten, John; Doyle, Colin

    2016-04-01

    Disaster monitoring systems can provide near real time estimates of population and infrastructure affected by sudden onset natural hazards. This information is useful to decision makers allocating lifesaving resources following disaster events. Floods are the world's most common and devastating disasters (UN, 2004; Doocy et al., 2013), and are particularly frequent and severe in the developing countries of Southeast Asia (Long and Trong, 2001; Jonkman, 2005; Kahn, 2005; Stromberg, 2007; Kirsch et al., 2012). Climate change, a strong regional monsoon, and widespread hydropower construction contribute to a complex and unpredictable regional hydrodynamic regime. As such, there is a critical need for novel techniques to assess flood impacts to population and infrastructure with haste during and following flood events in order to enable governments and agencies to optimize response efforts following disasters. Here, we build on methods to determine regional flood extent in near real time and develop systems that automatically quantify the socioeconomic impacts of flooding in Cambodia. Software developed on cloud based, distributed processing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is used to demonstrate spatial and numerical estimates of population, households, roadways, schools, hospitals, airports, agriculture and fish catch affected by severe monsoon flooding occurring in the Cambodian portion of Lower Mekong River Basin in 2011. Results show modest agreement with government and agency estimates. Maps and statistics generated from the system are intended to complement on the ground efforts and bridge information gaps to decision makers. The system is open source, flexible, and can be applied to other disasters (e.g. earthquakes, droughts, landslides) in various geographic regions.

  17. Case studies of extended model-based flood forecasting: prediction of dike strength and flood impacts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stuparu, Dana; Bachmann, Daniel; Bogaard, Tom; Twigt, Daniel; Verkade, Jan; de Bruijn, Karin; de Leeuw, Annemargreet

    2017-04-01

    Flood forecasts, warning and emergency response are important components in flood risk management. Most flood forecasting systems use models to translate weather predictions to forecasted discharges or water levels. However, this information is often not sufficient for real time decisions. A sound understanding of the reliability of embankments and flood dynamics is needed to react timely and reduce the negative effects of the flood. Where are the weak points in the dike system? When, how much and where the water will flow? When and where is the greatest impact expected? Model-based flood impact forecasting tries to answer these questions by adding new dimensions to the existing forecasting systems by providing forecasted information about: (a) the dike strength during the event (reliability), (b) the flood extent in case of an overflow or a dike failure (flood spread) and (c) the assets at risk (impacts). This work presents three study-cases in which such a set-up is applied. Special features are highlighted. Forecasting of dike strength. The first study-case focusses on the forecast of dike strength in the Netherlands for the river Rhine branches Waal, Nederrijn and IJssel. A so-called reliability transformation is used to translate the predicted water levels at selected dike sections into failure probabilities during a flood event. The reliability of a dike section is defined by fragility curves - a summary of the dike strength conditional to the water level. The reliability information enhances the emergency management and inspections of embankments. Ensemble forecasting. The second study-case shows the setup of a flood impact forecasting system in Dumfries, Scotland. The existing forecasting system is extended with a 2D flood spreading model in combination with the Delft-FIAT impact model. Ensemble forecasts are used to make use of the uncertainty in the precipitation forecasts, which is useful to quantify the certainty of a forecasted flood event. From global

  18. Operational water management of Rijnland water system and pilot of ensemble forecasting system for flood control

    Science.gov (United States)

    van der Zwan, Rene

    2013-04-01

    The Rijnland water system is situated in the western part of the Netherlands, and is a low-lying area of which 90% is below sea-level. The area covers 1,100 square kilometres, where 1.3 million people live, work, travel and enjoy leisure. The District Water Control Board of Rijnland is responsible for flood defence, water quantity and quality management. This includes design and maintenance of flood defence structures, control of regulating structures for an adequate water level management, and waste water treatment. For water quantity management Rijnland uses, besides an online monitoring network for collecting water level and precipitation data, a real time control decision support system. This decision support system consists of deterministic hydro-meteorological forecasts with a 24-hr forecast horizon, coupled with a control module that provides optimal operation schedules for the storage basin pumping stations. The uncertainty of the rainfall forecast is not forwarded in the hydrological prediction. At this moment 65% of the pumping capacity of the storage basin pumping stations can be automatically controlled by the decision control system. Within 5 years, after renovation of two other pumping stations, the total capacity of 200 m3/s will be automatically controlled. In critical conditions there is a need of both a longer forecast horizon and a probabilistic forecast. Therefore ensemble precipitation forecasts of the ECMWF are already consulted off-line during dry-spells, and Rijnland is running a pilot operational system providing 10-day water level ensemble forecasts. The use of EPS during dry-spells and the findings of the pilot will be presented. Challenges and next steps towards on-line implementation of ensemble forecasts for risk-based operational management of the Rijnland water system will be discussed. An important element in that discussion is the question: will policy and decision makers, operator and citizens adapt this Anticipatory Water

  19. Urban Surface Water Quality, Flood Water Quality and Human Health Impacts in Chinese Cities. What Do We Know?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yuhan Rui

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Climate change and urbanization have led to an increase in the frequency of extreme water related events such as flooding, which has negative impacts on the environment, economy and human health. With respect to the latter, our understanding of the interrelationship between flooding, urban surface water and human health is still very limited. More in-depth research in this area is needed to further strengthen the process of planning and implementation of responses to mitigate the negative health impacts of flooding in urban areas. The objective of this paper is to assess the state of the research on the interrelationship between surface water quality, flood water quality and human health in urban areas based on the published literature. These insights will be instrumental in identifying and prioritizing future research needs in this area. In this study, research publications in the domain of urban flooding, surface water quality and human health were collated using keyword searches. A detailed assessment of these publications substantiated the limited number of publications focusing on the link between flooding and human health. There was also an uneven geographical distribution of the study areas, as most of the studies focused on developed countries. A few studies have focused on developing countries, although the severity of water quality issues is higher in these countries. The study also revealed a disparity of research in this field across regions in China as most of the studies focused on the populous south-eastern region of China. The lack of studies in some regions has been attributed to the absence of flood water quality monitoring systems which allow the collection of real-time water quality monitoring data during flooding in urban areas. The widespread implementation of cost effective real-time water quality monitoring systems which are based on the latest remote or mobile phone based data acquisition techniques is recommended

  20. Flood extent and water level estimation from SAR using data-model integration

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ajadi, O. A.; Meyer, F. J.

    2017-12-01

    Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images have long been recognized as a valuable data source for flood mapping. Compared to other sources, SAR's weather and illumination independence and large area coverage at high spatial resolution supports reliable, frequent, and detailed observations of developing flood events. Accordingly, SAR has the potential to greatly aid in the near real-time monitoring of natural hazards, such as flood detection, if combined with automated image processing. This research works towards increasing the reliability and temporal sampling of SAR-derived flood hazard information by integrating information from multiple SAR sensors and SAR modalities (images and Interferometric SAR (InSAR) coherence) and by combining SAR-derived change detection information with hydrologic and hydraulic flood forecast models. First, the combination of multi-temporal SAR intensity images and coherence information for generating flood extent maps is introduced. The application of least-squares estimation integrates flood information from multiple SAR sensors, thus increasing the temporal sampling. SAR-based flood extent information will be combined with a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to reduce false alarms and to estimate water depth and flood volume. The SAR-based flood extent map is assimilated into the Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System (Hec-RAS) model to aid in hydraulic model calibration. The developed technology is improving the accuracy of flood information by exploiting information from data and models. It also provides enhanced flood information to decision-makers supporting the response to flood extent and improving emergency relief efforts.

  1. Use of ENVISAT ASAR Global Monitoring Mode to complement optical data in the mapping of rapid broad-scale flooding in Pakistan

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. O'Grady

    2011-11-01

    Full Text Available Envisat ASAR Global Monitoring Mode (GM data are used to produce maps of the extent of the flooding in Pakistan which are made available to the rapid response effort within 24 h of acquisition. The high temporal frequency and independence of the data from cloud-free skies makes GM data a viable tool for mapping flood waters during those periods where optical satellite data are unavailable, which may be crucial to rapid response disaster planning, where thousands of lives are affected. Image differencing techniques are used, with pre-flood baseline image backscatter values being deducted from target values to eliminate regions with a permanent flood-like radar response due to volume scattering and attenuation, and to highlight the low response caused by specular reflection by open flood water. The effect of local incidence angle on the received signal is mitigated by ensuring that the deducted image is acquired from the same orbit track as the target image. Poor separability of the water class with land in areas beyond the river channels is tackled using a region-growing algorithm which seeks threshold-conformance from seed pixels at the center of the river channels. The resultant mapped extents are tested against MODIS SWIR data where available, with encouraging results.

  2. Enhancing Community Based Early Warning Systems in Nepal with Flood Forecasting Using Local and Global Models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dugar, Sumit; Smith, Paul; Parajuli, Binod; Khanal, Sonu; Brown, Sarah; Gautam, Dilip; Bhandari, Dinanath; Gurung, Gehendra; Shakya, Puja; Kharbuja, RamGopal; Uprety, Madhab

    2017-04-01

    Operationalising effective Flood Early Warning Systems (EWS) in developing countries like Nepal poses numerous challenges, with complex topography and geology, sparse network of river and rainfall gauging stations and diverse socio-economic conditions. Despite these challenges, simple real-time monitoring based EWSs have been in place for the past decade. A key constraint of these simple systems is the very limited lead time for response - as little as 2-3 hours, especially for rivers originating from steep mountainous catchments. Efforts to increase lead time for early warning are focusing on imbedding forecasts into the existing early warning systems. In 2016, the Nepal Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) piloted an operational Probabilistic Flood Forecasting Model in major river basins across Nepal. This comprised a low data approach to forecast water levels, developed jointly through a research/practitioner partnership with Lancaster University and WaterNumbers (UK) and the International NGO Practical Action. Using Data-Based Mechanistic Modelling (DBM) techniques, the model assimilated rainfall and water levels to generate localised hourly flood predictions, which are presented as probabilistic forecasts, increasing lead times from 2-3 hours to 7-8 hours. The Nepal DHM has simultaneously started utilizing forecasts from the Global Flood Awareness System (GLoFAS) that provides streamflow predictions at the global scale based upon distributed hydrological simulations using numerical ensemble weather forecasts from the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). The aforementioned global and local models have already affected the approach to early warning in Nepal, being operational during the 2016 monsoon in the West Rapti basin in Western Nepal. On 24 July 2016, GLoFAS hydrological forecasts for the West Rapti indicated a sharp rise in river discharge above 1500 m3/sec (equivalent to the river warning level at 5 meters) with 53

  3. Drought and flood effects on macrobenthic communities in the estuary of Australia's largest river system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dittmann, Sabine; Baring, Ryan; Baggalley, Stephanie; Cantin, Agnes; Earl, Jason; Gannon, Ruan; Keuning, Justine; Mayo, Angela; Navong, Nathavong; Nelson, Matt; Noble, Warwick; Ramsdale, Tanith

    2015-11-01

    Estuaries are prone to drought and flood events, which can vary in frequency and intensity depending on water management and climate change. We investigated effects of two different drought and flow situations, including a four year long drought (referred to as Millennium drought) and a major flood event, on the macrobenthic community in the estuary and coastal lagoon of the Murray Mouth and Coorong, where freshwater inflows are strictly regulated. The analysis is based on ten years of annual monitoring of benthic communities and environmental conditions in sediment and water. The objectives were to identify changes in diversity, abundance, biomass and distribution, as well as community shifts and environmental drivers for the respective responses. The Millennium drought led to decreased taxonomic richness, abundance and biomass of macrobenthos as hypersaline conditions developed and water levels dropped. More taxa were found under very high salinities than predicted from the Remane diagram. When a flood event broke the Millennium drought, recovery took longer than from a shorter drought followed by small flows. A flow index was developed to assess the biological response subject to the duration of the preceding drought and flow volumes. The index showed higher taxonomic richness, abundance and biomass at intermediate and more continuous flow conditions. Abundance increased quickly after flows were restored, but the benthic community was initially composed of small bodied organisms and biomass increased only after several years once larger organisms became more abundant. Individual densities and constancy of distribution dropped during the drought for almost all macrobenthic taxa, but recoveries after the flood were taxon specific. Distinct benthic communities were detected over time before and after the drought and flood events, and spatially, as the benthic community in the hypersaline Coorong was split off with a salinity threshold of 64 identified by LINKTREE

  4. A Cascading Storm-Flood-Landslide Guidance System: Development and Application in China

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zeng, Ziyue; Tang, Guoqiang; Long, Di; Ma, Meihong; Hong, Yang

    2016-04-01

    Flash floods and landslides, triggered by storms, often interact and cause cascading effects on human lives and property. Satellite remote sensing data has significant potential use in analysis of these natural hazards. As one of the regions continuously affected by severe flash floods and landslides, Yunnan Province, located in Southwest China, has a complex mountainous hydrometeorology and suffers from frequent heavy rainfalls from May through to late September. Taking Yunnan as a test-bed, this study proposed a Cascading Storm-Flood-Landslide Guidance System to progressively analysis and evaluate the risk of the multi-hazards based on multisource satellite remote sensing data. First, three standardized rainfall amounts (average daily amount in flood seasons, maximum 1h and maximum 6h amount) from the products of Topical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) were used as rainfall indicators to derive the StorM Hazard Index (SMHI). In this process, an integrated approach of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Information-Entropy theory was adopted to determine the weight of each indicator. Then, land cover and vegetation cover data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products, soil type from the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) soil map, and slope from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data were add as semi-static geo-topographical indicators to derive the Flash Flood Hazard Index (FFHI). Furthermore, three more relevant landslide-controlling indicators, including elevation, slope angle and soil text were involved to derive the LandSlide Hazard Index (LSHI). Further inclusion of GDP, population and prevention measures as vulnerability indicators enabled to consecutively predict the risk of storm to flash flood and landslide, respectively. Consequently, the spatial patterns of the hazard indices show that the southeast of Yunnan has more possibility to encounter with storms

  5. Floods and climate: emerging perspectives for flood risk assessment and management

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Merz, B.; Aerts, J.; Arnbjerg-Nielsen, Karsten

    2014-01-01

    context of floods. We come to the following conclusions: (1) extending the traditional system boundaries (local catchment, recent decades, hydrological/hydraulic processes) opens up exciting possibilities for better understanding and improved tools for flood risk assessment and management. (2) Statistical......, and this variation may be partially quantifiable and predictable, with the perspective of dynamic, climate-informed flood risk management. (4) Efforts are needed to fully account for factors that contribute to changes in all three risk components (hazard, exposure, vulnerability) and to better understand......Flood estimation and flood management have traditionally been the domain of hydrologists, water resources engineers and statisticians, and disciplinary approaches abound. Dominant views have been shaped; one example is the catchment perspective: floods are formed and influenced by the interaction...

  6. Quantification of uncertainty in flood risk assessment for flood protection planning: a Bayesian approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dittes, Beatrice; Špačková, Olga; Ebrahimian, Negin; Kaiser, Maria; Rieger, Wolfgang; Disse, Markus; Straub, Daniel

    2017-04-01

    Flood risk estimates are subject to significant uncertainties, e.g. due to limited records of historic flood events, uncertainty in flood modeling, uncertain impact of climate change or uncertainty in the exposure and loss estimates. In traditional design of flood protection systems, these uncertainties are typically just accounted for implicitly, based on engineering judgment. In the AdaptRisk project, we develop a fully quantitative framework for planning of flood protection systems under current and future uncertainties using quantitative pre-posterior Bayesian decision analysis. In this contribution, we focus on the quantification of the uncertainties and study their relative influence on the flood risk estimate and on the planning of flood protection systems. The following uncertainty components are included using a Bayesian approach: 1) inherent and statistical (i.e. limited record length) uncertainty; 2) climate uncertainty that can be learned from an ensemble of GCM-RCM models; 3) estimates of climate uncertainty components not covered in 2), such as bias correction, incomplete ensemble, local specifics not captured by the GCM-RCM models; 4) uncertainty in the inundation modelling; 5) uncertainty in damage estimation. We also investigate how these uncertainties are possibly reduced in the future when new evidence - such as new climate models, observed extreme events, and socio-economic data - becomes available. Finally, we look into how this new evidence influences the risk assessment and effectivity of flood protection systems. We demonstrate our methodology for a pre-alpine catchment in southern Germany: the Mangfall catchment in Bavaria that includes the city of Rosenheim, which suffered significant losses during the 2013 flood event.

  7. A hydro-sedimentary modeling system for flash flood propagation and hazard estimation under different agricultural practices

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kourgialas, N. N.; Karatzas, G. P.

    2014-03-01

    A modeling system for the estimation of flash flood flow velocity and sediment transport is developed in this study. The system comprises three components: (a) a modeling framework based on the hydrological model HSPF, (b) the hydrodynamic module of the hydraulic model MIKE 11 (quasi-2-D), and (c) the advection-dispersion module of MIKE 11 as a sediment transport model. An important parameter in hydraulic modeling is the Manning's coefficient, an indicator of the channel resistance which is directly dependent on riparian vegetation changes. Riparian vegetation's effect on flood propagation parameters such as water depth (inundation), discharge, flow velocity, and sediment transport load is investigated in this study. Based on the obtained results, when the weed-cutting percentage is increased, the flood wave depth decreases while flow discharge, velocity and sediment transport load increase. The proposed modeling system is used to evaluate and illustrate the flood hazard for different riparian vegetation cutting scenarios. For the estimation of flood hazard, a combination of the flood propagation characteristics of water depth, flow velocity and sediment load was used. Next, a well-balanced selection of the most appropriate agricultural cutting practices of riparian vegetation was performed. Ultimately, the model results obtained for different agricultural cutting practice scenarios can be employed to create flood protection measures for flood-prone areas. The proposed methodology was applied to the downstream part of a small Mediterranean river basin in Crete, Greece.

  8. Development of Probabilistic Flood Inundation Mapping For Flooding Induced by Dam Failure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tsai, C.; Yeh, J. J. J.

    2017-12-01

    A primary function of flood inundation mapping is to forecast flood hazards and assess potential losses. However, uncertainties limit the reliability of inundation hazard assessments. Major sources of uncertainty should be taken into consideration by an optimal flood management strategy. This study focuses on the 20km reach downstream of the Shihmen Reservoir in Taiwan. A dam failure induced flood herein provides the upstream boundary conditions of flood routing. The two major sources of uncertainty that are considered in the hydraulic model and the flood inundation mapping herein are uncertainties in the dam break model and uncertainty of the roughness coefficient. The perturbance moment method is applied to a dam break model and the hydro system model to develop probabilistic flood inundation mapping. Various numbers of uncertain variables can be considered in these models and the variability of outputs can be quantified. The probabilistic flood inundation mapping for dam break induced floods can be developed with consideration of the variability of output using a commonly used HEC-RAS model. Different probabilistic flood inundation mappings are discussed and compared. Probabilistic flood inundation mappings are hoped to provide new physical insights in support of the evaluation of concerning reservoir flooded areas.

  9. Management of a Complex Open Channel Network During Flood Events

    Science.gov (United States)

    Franchini, M.; Valiani, A.; Schippa, L.; Mascellani, G.

    2003-04-01

    Most part of the area around Ferrara (Italy) is below the mean sea level and an extensive drainage system combined with several pump stations allows the use of this area for both urban development and industrial and agricultural activities. The three main channels of this hydraulic system constitute the Ferrara Inland Waterway (total length approximately 70 km), which connects the Po river near Ferrara to the sea. Because of the level difference between the upstream and dowstream ends of the waterway, three locks are located along it, each of them combined with a set of gates to control the water levels. During rainfall events, most of the water of the basin flows into the waterway and heavy precipitations sometimes cause flooding in several areas. This is due to the insufficiency of the channel network dimensions and an inadequate manual operation of the gates. This study presents a hydrological-hydraulic model for the entire Ferrara basin and a system of rules in order to operate the gates. In particular, their opening is designed to be regulated in real time by monitoring the water level in several sections along the channels. Besides flood peak attenuation, this operation strategy contributes also to the maintenance of a constant water level for irrigation and fluvial navigation during the dry periods. With reference to the flood event of May 1996, it is shown that this floodgate operation policy, unlike that which was actually adopted during that event, would lead to a significant flood peak attenuation, avoiding flooding in the area upstream of Ferrara.

  10. Forecasting skills of the ensemble hydro-meteorological system for the Po river floods

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ricciardi, Giuseppe; Montani, Andrea; Paccagnella, Tiziana; Pecora, Silvano; Tonelli, Fabrizio

    2013-04-01

    The Po basin is the largest and most economically important river-basin in Italy. Extreme hydrological events, including floods, flash floods and droughts, are expected to become more severe in the next future due to climate change, and related ground effects are linked both with environmental and social resilience. A Warning Operational Center (WOC) for hydrological event management was created in Emilia Romagna region. In the last years, the WOC faced challenges in legislation, organization, technology and economics, achieving improvements in forecasting skill and information dissemination. Since 2005, an operational forecasting and modelling system for flood modelling and forecasting has been implemented, aimed at supporting and coordinating flood control and emergency management on the whole Po basin. This system, referred to as FEWSPo, has also taken care of environmental aspects of flood forecast. The FEWSPo system has reached a very high level of complexity, due to the combination of three different hydrological-hydraulic chains (HEC-HMS/RAS - MIKE11 NAM/HD, Topkapi/Sobek), with several meteorological inputs (forecasted - COSMOI2, COSMOI7, COSMO-LEPS among others - and observed). In this hydrological and meteorological ensemble the management of the relative predictive uncertainties, which have to be established and communicated to decision makers, is a debated scientific and social challenge. Real time activities face professional, modelling and technological aspects but are also strongly interrelated with organization and human aspects. The authors will report a case study using the operational flood forecast hydro-meteorological ensemble, provided by the MIKE11 chain fed by COSMO_LEPS EQPF. The basic aim of the proposed approach is to analyse limits and opportunities of the long term forecast (with a lead time ranging from 3 to 5 days), for the implementation of low cost actions, also looking for a well informed decision making and the improvement of

  11. READY: a web-based geographical information system for enhanced flood resilience through raising awareness in citizens

    Science.gov (United States)

    Albano, R.; Sole, A.; Adamowski, J.

    2015-07-01

    As evidenced by the EU Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), flood management strategies in Europe have undergone a shift in focus in recent years. The goal of flood prevention using structural measures has been replaced by an emphasis on the management of flood risks using non-structural measures. One implication of this is that public authorities alone not only take responsibility for flood management. A broader range of stakeholders, who may personally experience the negative effects of flooding, also take on responsibility for protecting themselves. Therefore, it is vital that information concerning flood risks is conveyed to those who may be affected in order to facilitate the self-protection of citizens. Experience shows that problems persist even where efforts have been made to communicate flood risks. There is a need for the development of new tools that are able to rapidly disseminate flood-risk information to the general public. To be useful these tools must be able to present information relevant to the location of the user. Moreover, the content and design of the tool need to be adjusted to laypeople's needs. Dissemination and communication influence both people's access to and understanding of natural risk information. Such a tool could be a useful aid to effective management of flood risks. To address this gap, a web-based geographical information system (WebGIS) has been developed through the collaborative efforts of a group of scientists, hazard and risk analysts and managers, GIS analysts, system developers and communication designers. This tool, called "READY: Risk, Extreme Events, Adaptation, Defend Yourself", aims to enhance the general public knowledge of flood risk, making citizens more capable of responding appropriately during a flood event. The READY WebGIS has allowed for the visualization and easy querying of a complex hazard and risk database thanks to a high degree of interactivity and easily read maps. In this way, READY has enabled fast

  12. Flood Hazards - A National Threat

    Science.gov (United States)

    ,

    2006-01-01

    In the late summer of 2005, the remarkable flooding brought by Hurricane Katrina, which caused more than $200 billion in losses, constituted the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. However, even in typical years, flooding causes billions of dollars in damage and threatens lives and property in every State. Natural processes, such as hurricanes, weather systems, and snowmelt, can cause floods. Failure of levees and dams and inadequate drainage in urban areas can also result in flooding. On average, floods kill about 140 people each year and cause $6 billion in property damage. Although loss of life to floods during the past half-century has declined, mostly because of improved warning systems, economic losses have continued to rise due to increased urbanization and coastal development.

  13. Flood Hazard Mapping by Using Geographic Information System and Hydraulic Model: Mert River, Samsun, Turkey

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vahdettin Demir

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available In this study, flood hazard maps were prepared for the Mert River Basin, Samsun, Turkey, by using GIS and Hydrologic Engineering Centers River Analysis System (HEC-RAS. In this river basin, human life losses and a significant amount of property damages were experienced in 2012 flood. The preparation of flood risk maps employed in the study includes the following steps: (1 digitization of topographical data and preparation of digital elevation model using ArcGIS, (2 simulation of flood lows of different return periods using a hydraulic model (HEC-RAS, and (3 preparation of flood risk maps by integrating the results of (1 and (2.

  14. Data-Based Energy Efficient Clustered Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensors Networks – Tabuk Flood Monitoring System Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ammar Babiker

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Energy efficiency has been considered as the most important issue in wireless sensor networks. As in many applications, wireless sensors are scattered in a wide harsh area, where the battery replacement or charging will be quite difficult and it is the most important challenge. Therefore, the design of energy saving mechanism becomes mandatory in most recent research. In this paper, a new energy efficient clustered routing protocol is proposed: the proposed protocol is based on analyzing the data collected from the sensors in a base-station. Based on this analysis the cluster head will be selected as the one with the most useful data. Then, a variable time slot is specified to each sensor to minimize the transmission of repetitive and un-useful data. The proposed protocol Data-Based Energy Efficient Clustered Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensors Networks (DCRP was compared with the famous energy efficient LEACH protocol and also with one of the recent energy efficient routing protocols named Position Responsive Routing Protocol (PRRP. DCRP has been used in monitoring the floods in Tabuk area –Saudi Arabia. It shows comparatively better results.

  15. Internal flooding analyses results of Slovak NPPs

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sopira, Vladimir

    2000-01-01

    The assessment of the flood risk was the objective of the internal flooding analysis for NPPs Bohunice V1, V2 and Mochovce. All important flooding sources were identified. The rooms containing safety important components were analyzed from the point of view of: Integrity of flood boundaries; Capability for drainage; Flood signalisation; Flood localization and liquidation; Vulnerability of safety system component. The redundancies of safety systems are located mostly separately and no flood can endanger more than single train. It can be concluded that NPPs with WWER-440 are very safe against the flooding initiating event

  16. Flood-tracking chart for the Withlacoochee and Little River Basins in south-central Georgia and northern Florida

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gotvald, Anthony J.; McCallum, Brian E.; Painter, Jaime A.

    2014-01-01

    The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with other Federal, State, and local agencies, operates a flood-monitoring system in the Withlacoochee and Little River Basins. This system is a network of automated river stage stations (ten are shown on page 2 of this publication) that transmit stage data through satellite telemetry to the USGS in Atlanta, Georgia and the National Weather Service (NWS) in Peachtree City, Georgia. During floods, the public and emergency response agencies use this information to make decisions about road closures, evacuations, and other public safety issues. This Withlacoochee and Little River Basins flood-tracking chart can be used by local citizens and emergency response personnel to record the latest river stage and predicted flood-crest information along the Withlacoochee River, Little River, and Okapilco Creek in south-central Georgia and northern Florida. By comparing the current stage (water-surface level above a datum) and predicted flood crest to the recorded peak stages of previous floods, emergency response personnel and residents can make informed decisions concerning the threat to life and property.

  17. Development of high-resolution multi-scale modelling system for simulation of coastal-fluvial urban flooding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Comer, Joanne; Indiana Olbert, Agnieszka; Nash, Stephen; Hartnett, Michael

    2017-02-01

    Urban developments in coastal zones are often exposed to natural hazards such as flooding. In this research, a state-of-the-art, multi-scale nested flood (MSN_Flood) model is applied to simulate complex coastal-fluvial urban flooding due to combined effects of tides, surges and river discharges. Cork city on Ireland's southwest coast is a study case. The flood modelling system comprises a cascade of four dynamically linked models that resolve the hydrodynamics of Cork Harbour and/or its sub-region at four scales: 90, 30, 6 and 2 m. Results demonstrate that the internalization of the nested boundary through the use of ghost cells combined with a tailored adaptive interpolation technique creates a highly dynamic moving boundary that permits flooding and drying of the nested boundary. This novel feature of MSN_Flood provides a high degree of choice regarding the location of the boundaries to the nested domain and therefore flexibility in model application. The nested MSN_Flood model through dynamic downscaling facilitates significant improvements in accuracy of model output without incurring the computational expense of high spatial resolution over the entire model domain. The urban flood model provides full characteristics of water levels and flow regimes necessary for flood hazard identification and flood risk assessment.

  18. Floods and Flash Flooding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Floods and flash flooding Now is the time to determine your area’s flood risk. If you are not sure whether you ... If you are in a floodplain, consider buying flood insurance. Do not drive around barricades. If your ...

  19. Urban flood return period assessment through rainfall-flood response modelling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Murla Tuyls, Damian; Thorndahl, Søren

    2017-04-01

    Intense rainfall can often cause severe floods, especially in urbanized areas, where population density or large impermeable areas are found. In this context, floods can generate a direct impact in a social-environmental-economic viewpoint. Traditionally, in design of Urban Drainage Systems (UDS), correlation between return period (RP) of a given rainfall and RP of its consequent flood has been assumed to be linear (e.g. DS/EN752 (2008)). However, this is not always the case. Complex UDS, where diverse hydraulic infrastructures are often found, increase the heterogeneity of system response, which may cause an alteration of the mentioned correlation. Consequently, reliability on future urban planning, design and resilience against floods may be also affected by this misassumption. In this study, an assessment of surface flood RP across rainfall RP has been carried out at Lystrup, a urbanized catchment area of 440ha and 10.400inhab. located in Jutland (Denmark), which has received the impact of several pluvial flooding in the last recent years. A historical rainfall dataset from the last 35 years from two different rain gauges located at 2 and 10 km from the study area has been provided by the Danish Wastewater Pollution Committee and the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). The most extreme 25 rainfall events have been selected through a two-step multi-criteria procedure, ensuring an adequate variability of rainfall, from extreme high peak storms with a short duration to moderate rainfall with longer duration. In addition, a coupled 1D/2D surface and network UDS model of the catchment area developed in an integrated MIKE URBAN and MIKE Flood model (DHI 2014), considering both permeable and impermeable areas, in combination with a DTM (2x2m res.) has been used to study and assess in detail flood RP. Results show an ambiguous relation between rainfall RP and flood response. Local flood levels, flood area and volume RP estimates should therefore not be neglected in

  20. An early warning system for flash floods in Egypt

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cools, J.; Abdelkhalek, A.; El Sammany, M.; Fahmi, A. H.; Bauwens, W.; Huygens, M.

    2009-09-01

    This paper describes the development of the Flash Flood Manager, abbreviated as FlaFloM. The Flash Flood Manager is an early warning system for flash floods which is developed under the EU LIFE project FlaFloM. It is applied to Wadi Watier located in the Sinai peninsula (Egypt) and discharges in the Red Sea at the local economic and tourist hub of Nuweiba city. FlaFloM consists of a chain of four modules: 1) Data gathering module, 2) Forecasting module, 3) Decision support module or DSS and 4) Warning module. Each module processes input data and consequently send the output to the following module. In case of a flash flood emergency, the final outcome of FlaFloM is a flood warning which is sent out to decision-makers. The ‘data gathering module’ collects input data from different sources, validates the input, visualise data and exports it to other modules. Input data is provided ideally as water stage (h), discharge (Q) and rainfall (R) through real-time field measurements and external forecasts. This project, however, as occurs in many arid flash flood prone areas, was confronted with a scarcity of data, and insufficient insight in the characteristics that release a flash flood. Hence, discharge and water stage data were not available. Although rainfall measurements are available through classical off line rain gauges, the sparse rain gauges network couldn’t catch the spatial and temporal characteristics of rainfall events. To overcome this bottleneck, we developed rainfall intensity raster maps (mm/hr) with an hourly time step and raster cell of 1*1km. These maps are derived through downscaling from two sources of global instruments: the weather research and forecasting model (WRF) and satellite estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The ‘forecast module’ comprises three numerical models that, using data from the gathering module performs simulations on command: a rainfall-runoff model, a river flow model, and a flood model. A

  1. Modelling of ammonia volatilisation in fertilised and flooded rice systems

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Khairudin, Nurulhuda

    2017-01-01

    In flooded rice systems that are broadcast with urea, significant amounts of nitrogen (N) may be lost to the atmosphere in the form of ammonia (NH3). Many models with different complexities with regards to describing the process of NH3 volatilisation and the overall N dynamics in the systems are

  2. Intelligent Flood Adaptive Context-aware System: How Wireless Sensors Adapt their Configuration based on Environmental Phenomenon Events

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jie SUN

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Henceforth, new generations of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN have to be able to adapt their behavior to collect, from the study phenomenon, quality data for long periods of time. We have thus proposed a new formalization for the design and the implementation of context-aware systems relying on a WSN for the data collection. To illustrate this proposal, we also present an environmental use case: the study of flood events in a watershed. In this paper, we detail the simulation tool that we have developed in order to implement our model. We simulate several scenarios of context-aware systems to monitor a watershed. The data used for the simulation are the observation data of the French Orgeval watershed.

  3. Assessing uncertainties in flood forecasts for decision making: prototype of an operational flood management system integrating ensemble predictions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    J. Dietrich

    2009-08-01

    Full Text Available Ensemble forecasts aim at framing the uncertainties of the potential future development of the hydro-meteorological situation. A probabilistic evaluation can be used to communicate forecast uncertainty to decision makers. Here an operational system for ensemble based flood forecasting is presented, which combines forecasts from the European COSMO-LEPS, SRNWP-PEPS and COSMO-DE prediction systems. A multi-model lagged average super-ensemble is generated by recombining members from different runs of these meteorological forecast systems. A subset of the super-ensemble is selected based on a priori model weights, which are obtained from ensemble calibration. Flood forecasts are simulated by the conceptual rainfall-runoff-model ArcEGMO. Parameter uncertainty of the model is represented by a parameter ensemble, which is a priori generated from a comprehensive uncertainty analysis during model calibration. The use of a computationally efficient hydrological model within a flood management system allows us to compute the hydro-meteorological model chain for all members of the sub-ensemble. The model chain is not re-computed before new ensemble forecasts are available, but the probabilistic assessment of the output is updated when new information from deterministic short range forecasts or from assimilation of measured data becomes available. For hydraulic modelling, with the desired result of a probabilistic inundation map with high spatial resolution, a replacement model can help to overcome computational limitations. A prototype of the developed framework has been applied for a case study in the Mulde river basin. However these techniques, in particular the probabilistic assessment and the derivation of decision rules are still in their infancy. Further research is necessary and promising.

  4. Repetitive flood victims and acceptance of FEMA mitigation offers: an analysis with community-system policy implications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kick, Edward L; Fraser, James C; Fulkerson, Gregory M; McKinney, Laura A; De Vries, Daniel H

    2011-07-01

    Of all natural disasters, flooding causes the greatest amount of economic and social damage. The United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) uses a number of hazard mitigation grant programmes for flood victims, including mitigation offers to relocate permanently repetitive flood loss victims. This study examines factors that help to explain the degree of difficulty repetitive flood loss victims experience when they make decisions about relocating permanently after multiple flood losses. Data are drawn from interviews with FEMA officials and a survey of flood victims from eight repetitive flooding sites. The qualitative and quantitative results show the importance of rational choices by flood victims in their mitigation decisions, as they relate to financial variables, perceptions of future risk, attachments to home and community, and the relationships between repetitive flood loss victims and the local flood management officials who help them. The results offer evidence to suggest the value of a more community-system approach to FEMA relocation practices. © 2011 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2011.

  5. Integrated Urban Flood Analysis considering Optimal Operation of Flood Control Facilities in Urban Drainage Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moon, Y. I.; Kim, M. S.; Choi, J. H.; Yuk, G. M.

    2017-12-01

    eavy rainfall has become a recent major cause of urban area flooding due to the climate change and urbanization. To prevent property damage along with casualties, a system which can alert and forecast urban flooding must be developed. Optimal performance of reducing flood damage can be expected of urban drainage facilities when operated in smaller rainfall events over extreme ones. Thus, the purpose of this study is to execute: A) flood forecasting system using runoff analysis based on short term rainfall; and B) flood warning system which operates based on the data from pump stations and rainwater storage in urban basins. In result of the analysis, it is shown that urban drainage facilities using short term rainfall forecasting data by radar will be more effective to reduce urban flood damage than using only the inflow data of the facility. Keywords: Heavy Rainfall, Urban Flood, Short-term Rainfall Forecasting, Optimal operating of urban drainage facilities. AcknowledgmentsThis research was supported by a grant (17AWMP-B066744-05) from Advanced Water Management Research Program (AWMP) funded by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Korean government.

  6. Operational flood forecasting, warning and response for multi-scale flood risks in developing cities

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rogelis Prada, M.C.

    2016-01-01

    Flood early warning systems are recognized as one of the most effective flood risk management instruments when correctly embedded in comprehensive flood risk management strategies and policies. Many efforts around the world are being put in place to advance the components that determine the

  7. Estimation of phosphorus flux in rivers during flooding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Yen-Chang; Liu, Jih-Hung; Kuo, Jan-Tai; Lin, Cheng-Fang

    2013-07-01

    rivers during flooding should be monitored to evaluate the loading of phosphorus more precisely. The results show that monitoring and controlling phosphorus transport during flooding can help prevent the eutrophication of a reservoir.

  8. Behaviour of suspended particulate matter (SPM and selected trace metals during the 2002 summer flood in the River Elbe (Germany at Magdeburg monitoring station

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Baborowski

    2004-01-01

    Full Text Available In August 2002, in the worst flooding in more than 100 years, the River Elbe destroyed built-up areas and caused widespread erosion and the relocation of soils and river sediments. To assess the pollutants entering the water, surveys of dissolved constituents and suspended particulate matter (SPM were carried out daily during the flood at a monitoring station near Magdeburg. The sampling point is part of the network of the International Commission for the Protection of the Elbe (ICPE. The results were compared with those of previous flood studies which used the same sampling strategy. Unlike past floods, the 2002 flood was characterised by the transport of relatively fine suspended material with a low mass concentration. Owing to different input sources, the maxima of dry weight and of particle number concentration occurred at different times. Hg, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Ni and Cr showed a maximum concentration concurrent with the dry weight of the SPM, whereas the maximum concentrations of As, Pb, and Cd coincided with the particle number concentration peak. The concentration of particulate matter decreased rapidly, unlike the concentrations of dissolved substances such as DOC and trace metals, as well as the values of UV extinction, all of which remained high for a longer period. Comparing the results of the 2002 flood with the winter floods in 1995, 1999 and 2000, revealed increased values of As and Pb as well as higher concentrations of dissolved compounds. Keywords: river, flood, transport, suspended particulate matter, trace metals, dissolved compounds, Elbe

  9. Rhizosphere dynamics of two riparian plant species from the water fluctuation zone of Three Gorges Reservoir, P.R. China - pH, oxygen and LMWOA monitoring during short flooding events

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schreiber, Christina M.; Schurr, Ulrich; Zeng, Bo; Höltkemeier, Agnes; Kuhn, Arnd J.

    2010-05-01

    Since the construction of the Three Gorges Dam at the Yangtze River in China, the reservoir management created a new 30m water fluctuation zone 45-75m above the original water level. Only species well adapted to long-time flooding (up to several months) will be able to vegetate the river banks and replace the original vegetation. To investigate how common species of the riverbanks cope with submergence, Alternanthera philoxeroides Mart. and Arundinella anomala Steud., two flooding resistant riparian species, have been examined in a rhizotron environment. Short-time (2 days waterlogging, 2 days flooding, 2 days recovery) flooding cycles in the original substrate and long time (14 days waterlogging, flooding, recovery) flooding cycles, in original substrate and sterile glass bead substrate, have been simulated in floodable two-way access rhizotrons. Oxygen- and pH-sensitive foils (planar optodes, PreSens) automatically monitored root reaction in a confined space (2cm2 each) on the backside of the rhizotron, while soil solution samples were taken 2 times a day from the other side of the rhizotron at the corresponding area through filter and steel capillaries. The samples were analyzed by capillary electrophoresis for low molecular weight organic acids (LMWOA, i.e. oxalic, formic, succinic, malic, acetic, glyoxylic, lactic and citric acid). Results show diurnal rhythms of rhizospheric acidification for both species in high resolution, combined with oxygen entry into the root surrounding during waterlogged state. Flooding caused stronger acidification in the rhizosphere, that were however not accompanied by increased occurrence of LMWOA except for acetic and glyoxylic acid. First results from longer flooding periods show stable diurnal rhythms during waterlogging, but no strongly increased activity during the flooding event. Performance of the two species is not hampered by being waterlogged, and they follow a silencing strategy during a longer phase of anoxia without

  10. An application of Geographic Information System in mapping flood ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Roland

    1Department of Geography, Benue State University, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria. 2National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Central Area, Abuja, Nigeria. Accepted 20 May, 2013. This study deals with the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in mapping flood risk zones in Makurdi Town. This study ...

  11. The use of Natural Flood Management to mitigate local flooding in the rural landscape

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilkinson, Mark; Quinn, Paul; Ghimire, Sohan; Nicholson, Alex; Addy, Steve

    2014-05-01

    The past decade has seen increases in the occurrence of flood events across Europe, putting a growing number of settlements of varying sizes at risk. The issue of flooding in smaller villages is usually not well publicised. In these small communities, the cost of constructing and maintaining traditional flood defences often outweigh the potential benefits, which has led to a growing quest for more cost effective and sustainable approaches. Here we aim to provide such an approach that alongside flood risk reduction, also has multipurpose benefits of sediment control, water quality amelioration, and habitat creation. Natural flood management (NFM) aims to reduce flooding by working with natural features and characteristics to slow down or temporarily store flood waters. NFM measures include dynamic water storage ponds and wetlands, interception bunds, channel restoration and instream wood placement, and increasing soil infiltration through soil management and tree planting. Based on integrated monitoring and modelling studies, we demonstrate the potential to manage runoff locally using NFM in rural systems by effectively managing flow pathways (hill slopes and small channels) and by exploiting floodplains and buffers strips. Case studies from across the UK show that temporary storage ponds (ranging from 300 to 3000m3) and other NFM measures can reduce peak flows in small catchments (5 to 10 km2) by up to 15 to 30 percent. In addition, increasing the overall effective storage capacity by a network of NFM measures was found to be most effective for total reduction of local flood peaks. Hydraulic modelling has shown that the positioning of such features within the catchment, and how they are connected to the main channel, may also affect their effectiveness. Field evidence has shown that these ponds can collect significant accumulations of fine sediment during flood events. On the other hand, measures such as wetlands could also play an important role during low flow

  12. Pump Hydro Energy Storage systems (PHES) in groundwater flooded quarries

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poulain, Angélique; de Dreuzy, Jean-Raynald; Goderniaux, Pascal

    2018-04-01

    Pump storage hydroelectricity is an efficient way to temporarily store energy. This technique requires to store temporarily a large volume of water in an upper reservoir, and to release it through turbines to the lower reservoir, to produce electricity. Recently, the idea of using old flooded quarries as a lower reservoir has been evoked. However, these flooded quarries are generally connected to unconfined aquifers. Consequently, pumping or injecting large volumes of water, within short time intervals, will have an impact on the adjacent aquifers. Conversely, water exchanges between the quarry and the aquifer may also influence the water level fluctuations in the lower reservoir. Using numerical modelling, this study investigates the interactions between generic flooded open pit quarries and adjacent unconfined aquifers, during various pump-storage cyclic stresses. The propagation of sinusoidal stresses in the adjacent porous media and the amplitude of water level fluctuations in the quarry are studied. Homogeneous rock media and the presence of fractures in the vicinity of the quarry are considered. Results show that hydrological quarry - rock interactions must be considered with caution, when implementing pump - storage systems. For rock media characterized by high hydraulic conductivity and porosity values, water volumes exchanges during cycles may affect significantly the amplitude of the water level fluctuations in the quarry, and as a consequence, the instantaneous electricity production. Regarding the impact of the pump - storage cyclic stresses on the surrounding environment, the distance of influence is potentially high under specific conditions, and is enhanced with the occurrence of rock heterogeneities, such as fractures. The impact around the quarry used as a lower reservoir thus appears as an important constraining factor regarding the feasibility of pump - storage systems, to be assessed carefully if groundwater level fluctuations around the quarry

  13. Integrating Local Experiential and Hydrometeorological Data to Understand Knowledge Uncertainties and to Build Resilience to Flooding in Two Puerto Rican Communities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramsey, M.; Nytch, C. J.; Branoff, B.

    2016-12-01

    Socio-hydrological studies that explore feedbacks between social and biophysical processes related to flood risk can help managers identify strategies that increase a community's freshwater security. However, knowledge uncertainty due to coarse spatio-temporal coverage of hydrological monitoring data, missing riverine discharge and precipitation records, assumptions of flood risk models, and effects of urbanization, can limit the ability of these studies to isolate hydrological responses to social drivers of flooding and a changing climate. Local experiential knowledge can provide much needed information about 1) actual flood spatio-temporal patterns, 2) human impacts and perceptions of flood events, and 3) mechanisms to validate flood risk studies and understand key social elements of the system. We addressed these knowledge gaps by comparing the location and timing of flood events described in resident interviews and resident drawn maps (total = 97) from two San Juan communities with NOAA and USGS precipitation and riverine discharge data archives, and FEMA flood maps. Analyses of five focal flood events revealed 1) riverine monitoring data failed to record a major flood event caused by localized blockage of the river, 2) residents did not mention multiple extreme riverine discharge events, 3) resident and FEMA flood maps matched closely but resident maps provided finer spatial information about frequency of flooding, and 4) only a small percentage of residents remembered the dates of flood events. Local knowledge provided valuable social data about flood impacts on human economic and physical/psychological wellbeing, perceptions about factors causing flooding, and what residents use as sources of flood information. A simple mechanism or tool for residents to record their flood experiences in real-time will address the uncertainties in local knowledge and improve social memory. The integration of local experiential knowledge with simulated and empirical hydro

  14. Modeling multi-source flooding disaster and developing simulation framework in Delta

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Y.; Cui, X.; Zhang, W.

    2016-12-01

    Most Delta regions of the world are densely populated and with advanced economies. However, due to impact of the multi-source flooding (upstream flood, rainstorm waterlogging, storm surge flood), the Delta regions is very vulnerable. The academic circles attach great importance to the multi-source flooding disaster in these areas. The Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration in south China is selected as the research area. Based on analysis of natural and environmental characteristics data of the Delta urban agglomeration(remote sensing data, land use data, topographic map, etc.), hydrological monitoring data, research of the uneven distribution and process of regional rainfall, the relationship between the underlying surface and the parameters of runoff, effect of flood storage pattern, we use an automatic or semi-automatic method for dividing spatial units to reflect the runoff characteristics in urban agglomeration, and develop an Multi-model Ensemble System in changing environment, including urban hydrologic model, parallel computational 1D&2D hydrodynamic model, storm surge forecast model and other professional models, the system will have the abilities like real-time setting a variety of boundary conditions, fast and real-time calculation, dynamic presentation of results, powerful statistical analysis function. The model could be optimized and improved by a variety of verification methods. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41471427); Special Basic Research Key Fund for Central Public Scientific Research Institutes.

  15. Recent advances in environmental monitoring using commercial microwave links

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alpert, Pinhas; Guez, Oded; Messer, Hagit; David, Noam; Harel, Oz; Eshel, Adam; Cohen, Ori

    2016-04-01

    Recent advances in environmental monitoring using commercial microwave links Pinhas Alpert, H. Messer, N. David, O. Guez, O. Cohen, O. Harel, A. Eshel Tel Aviv University, Israel The propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the lower atmosphere, at centimeter wavelengths, is impaired by atmospheric conditions. Absorption and scattering of the radiation, at frequencies of tens of GHz, are directly related to the atmospheric phenomena, primarily precipitation, oxygen, mist, fog and water vapor. As was recently shown, wireless communication networks supply high resolution precipitation measurements at ground level while often being situated in flood prone areas, covering large parts of these hazardous regions. On the other hand, at present, there are no satisfactory real time flash flood warning facilities found to cope well with this phenomenon. I will exemplify the flash flood warning potential of the commercial wireless communication system for semi-arid region cases when floods occurred in the Judean desert in Israel with comparison to hydrological measurements in the Dead Sea area. In addition, I will review our recent improvements in monitoring rainfall as well as other-than-rain phenomena like, fog, dew, atmospheric moisture. References: N. David, P. Alpert, and H. Messer, "Technical Note: Novel method for water vapor monitoring using wireless communication networks measurements", Atmos. Chem. Phys., 9, 2413-2418, 2009. A. Rayitsfeld, R. Samuels, A. Zinevich, U. Hadar and P. Alpert,"Comparison of two methodologies for long term rainfall monitoring using a commercial microwave communication system", Atmospheric Research 104-105, 119-127, 2012. N. David, O. Sendik, H. Messer and P. Alpert, "Cellular network infrastructure-the future of fog monitoring?" BAMS (Oct. issue), 1687-1698, 2015. O. Harel, David, N., Alpert, P. and Messer, H., "The potential of microwave communication networks to detect dew using the GLRT- experimental study", IEEE Journal of Selected

  16. Flood control design requirements and flood evaluation methods of inland nuclear power plant

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhang Ailing; Wang Ping; Zhu Jingxing

    2011-01-01

    Effect of flooding is one of the key safety factors and environmental factors in inland nuclear power plant sitting. Up to now, the rule of law and standard systems are established for the selection of nuclear power plant location and flood control requirements in China. In this paper flood control standards of China and other countries are introduced. Several inland nuclear power plants are taken as examples to thoroughly discuss the related flood evaluation methods. The suggestions are also put forward in the paper. (authors)

  17. Addressing Flooding and SuDS when Improving Drainage and Sewerage Systems—A Comparative Study of Selected Scandinavian Cities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Geir Torgersen

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Pluvial flooding already challenges the capacity of drainage and sewerage system in urban areas in Scandinavia. For system owners this requires a stricter prioritization when improving the systems. Experts seem to agree that a regime shift from improving old combined sewers by piped solutions to more sustainable drainage systems (SuDS, must take place. In this paper results from an investigation amongst the largest cities in Norway, Denmark and Sweden concerning drivers and preferred methods for improving the old system are presented. The results indicate that Norway ranks flood prevention lower than the other Scandinavian countries. During the last decades, Norwegian authorities have had a strong focus on pollution from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP. The attention to drainage and sewerage system regarding flooding, water leaks, infiltration or pollution has been neglected. Renewal or rate of investment in relation to existing drainage and sewerage system is easy to register, and provides a measure of the activity. In order to optimize flood prevention, and may be promoting the use of SuDS, the cities should be required to measure the efficiency, either by monitoring or modeling the impact of stormwater to the system. Lack of such requirements from Norwegian authorities seem to be a plausible explanation to why Norwegian cities are less focused on flood prevention compared to Swedish and Danish cities.

  18. Lessons learned from international flood PSAS in Korea

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kim, Myungro; Lee, Beomsu; Kang, Sunkoo

    1998-01-01

    Risk due to internal flooding has been one of the major concerns for the design and operation of nuclear power plants. To reduce the risk from internal flooding, two design approaches for flood protection systems, active and passive, can be considered. The approaches to flood protection design are different for each plant design, and they are highly dependent on the plant type. The flood PSA revealed that the potential plant risk due to a flooding event is highly dependent on the flood design. The major design characteristics are 1) the location of systems that utilize sea water and their impact to other safety related systems, and 2) the existence of emergency overflow paths and an emergency sump which can transfer and accommodate flood water to prevent a significant flooding event. To identify and compare the effectiveness and potential vulnerability of various Korean nuclear power plants' flood designs, the flood PSAs have been performed for three plant designs, such as existing Korean PWR plants, CANDU type PHWR plants, and Korean Standard Nuclear Plants. Based on the evaluation, several design changes were recommended. (author)

  19. Evaluation of Flooding Risk and Engineering Protection Against Floods for Ulan-Ude

    Science.gov (United States)

    Borisova, T. A.

    2017-11-01

    The report presents the results of the study on analysis and risk assessment in relation to floods for Ulan-Ude and provides the developed recommendations of the activities for engineering protection of the population and economic installations. The current situation is reviewed and the results of the site survey are shown to identify the challenges and areas of negative water influence along with the existing security system. The report presents a summary of floods and index risk assessment. The articles describes the scope of eventual flooding, underflooding and enumerates the economic installations inside the urban areas’ research-based zones of flooding at the rated levels of water to identify the likeliness of exceedance. The assessment of damage from flood equal to 1% is shown.

  20. Can we predict the next urban flood?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Thorndahl, Søren; Nielsen, Jesper Ellerbæk; Jensen, David Getreuer

    2015-01-01

    Flooding produced by high-intensive local rainfall and drainage system capacity exceedance can have severe impacts in cities. In order to prepare cities for these types of flood events – especially in the future climate – it is valuable to be able to simulate these events numericallyboth...... historically and in real-time. There is a rather untested potential in real-time prediction of urban floods. In this paper radar data observations with different spatial and temporal resolution, radar nowcasts of 0-2 hours leadtime, and numerical weather models with leadtimes up to 24 h are used as inputs...... to an integrated flood and drainage systems model with the purpose to investigate the potential for predicting future floods. The system is tested on a small town Lystrup in Denmark, which has been recently flooded. Results show that it is possible to generate detailed flood maps in real-time with high resolution...

  1. A hydro-meteorological ensemble prediction system for real-time flood forecasting purposes in the Milano area

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ravazzani, Giovanni; Amengual, Arnau; Ceppi, Alessandro; Romero, Romualdo; Homar, Victor; Mancini, Marco

    2015-04-01

    Analysis of forecasting strategies that can provide a tangible basis for flood early warning procedures and mitigation measures over the Western Mediterranean region is one of the fundamental motivations of the European HyMeX programme. Here, we examine a set of hydro-meteorological episodes that affected the Milano urban area for which the complex flood protection system of the city did not completely succeed before the occurred flash-floods. Indeed, flood damages have exponentially increased in the area during the last 60 years, due to industrial and urban developments. Thus, the improvement of the Milano flood control system needs a synergism between structural and non-structural approaches. The flood forecasting system tested in this work comprises the Flash-flood Event-based Spatially distributed rainfall-runoff Transformation, including Water Balance (FEST-WB) and the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) models, in order to provide a hydrological ensemble prediction system (HEPS). Deterministic and probabilistic quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPFs) have been provided by WRF model in a set of 48-hours experiments. HEPS has been generated by combining different physical parameterizations (i.e. cloud microphysics, moist convection and boundary-layer schemes) of the WRF model in order to better encompass the atmospheric processes leading to high precipitation amounts. We have been able to test the value of a probabilistic versus a deterministic framework when driving Quantitative Discharge Forecasts (QDFs). Results highlight (i) the benefits of using a high-resolution HEPS in conveying uncertainties for this complex orographic area and (ii) a better simulation of the most of extreme precipitation events, potentially enabling valuable probabilistic QDFs. Hence, the HEPS copes with the significant deficiencies found in the deterministic QPFs. These shortcomings would prevent to correctly forecast the location and timing of high precipitation rates and

  2. Flood Mapping and Flood Dynamics of the Mekong Delta: ENVISAT-ASAR-WSM Based Time Series Analyses

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stefan Dech

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available Satellite remote sensing is a valuable tool for monitoring flooding. Microwave sensors are especially appropriate instruments, as they allow the differentiation of inundated from non-inundated areas, regardless of levels of solar illumination or frequency of cloud cover in regions experiencing substantial rainy seasons. In the current study we present the longest synthetic aperture radar-based time series of flood and inundation information derived for the Mekong Delta that has been analyzed for this region so far. We employed overall 60 Envisat ASAR Wide Swath Mode data sets at a spatial resolution of 150 meters acquired during the years 2007–2011 to facilitate a thorough understanding of the flood regime in the Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam comprises 13 provinces and is home to 18 million inhabitants. Extreme dry seasons from late December to May and wet seasons from June to December characterize people’s rural life. In this study, we show which areas of the delta are frequently affected by floods and which regions remain dry all year round. Furthermore, we present which areas are flooded at which frequency and elucidate the patterns of flood progression over the course of the rainy season. In this context, we also examine the impact of dykes on floodwater emergence and assess the relationship between retrieved flood occurrence patterns and land use. In addition, the advantages and shortcomings of ENVISAT ASAR-WSM based flood mapping are discussed. The results contribute to a comprehensive understanding of Mekong Delta flood dynamics in an environment where the flow regime is influenced by the Mekong River, overland water-flow, anthropogenic floodwater control, as well as the tides.

  3. Analysis of flood inundation in ungauged basins based on multi-source remote sensing data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gao, Wei; Shen, Qiu; Zhou, Yuehua; Li, Xin

    2018-02-09

    Floods are among the most expensive natural hazards experienced in many places of the world and can result in heavy losses of life and economic damages. The objective of this study is to analyze flood inundation in ungauged basins by performing near-real-time detection with flood extent and depth based on multi-source remote sensing data. Via spatial distribution analysis of flood extent and depth in a time series, the inundation condition and the characteristics of flood disaster can be reflected. The results show that the multi-source remote sensing data can make up the lack of hydrological data in ungauged basins, which is helpful to reconstruct hydrological sequence; the combination of MODIS (moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer) surface reflectance productions and the DFO (Dartmouth Flood Observatory) flood database can achieve the macro-dynamic monitoring of the flood inundation in ungauged basins, and then the differential technique of high-resolution optical and microwave images before and after floods can be used to calculate flood extent to reflect spatial changes of inundation; the monitoring algorithm for the flood depth combining RS and GIS is simple and easy and can quickly calculate the depth with a known flood extent that is obtained from remote sensing images in ungauged basins. Relevant results can provide effective help for the disaster relief work performed by government departments.

  4. A Sharable and Efficient Metadata Model for Heterogeneous Earth Observation Data Retrieval in Multi-Scale Flood Mapping

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nengcheng Chen

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Remote sensing plays an important role in flood mapping and is helping advance flood monitoring and management. Multi-scale flood mapping is necessary for dividing floods into several stages for comprehensive management. However, existing data systems are typically heterogeneous owing to the use of different access protocols and archiving metadata models. In this paper, we proposed a sharable and efficient metadata model (APEOPM for constructing an Earth observation (EO data system to retrieve remote sensing data for flood mapping. The proposed model contains two sub-models, an access protocol model and an enhanced encoding model. The access protocol model helps unify heterogeneous access protocols and can achieve intelligent access via a semantic enhancement method. The enhanced encoding model helps unify a heterogeneous archiving metadata model. Wuhan city, one of the most important cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China, is selected as a study area for testing the retrieval of heterogeneous EO data and flood mapping. The past torrential rain period from 25 March 2015 to 10 April 2015 is chosen as the temporal range in this study. To aid in comprehensive management, mapping is conducted at different spatial and temporal scales. In addition, the efficiency of data retrieval is analyzed, and validation between the flood maps and actual precipitation was conducted. The results show that the flood map coincided with the actual precipitation.

  5. Leveraging Trillions of Pixels for Flood Mitigation Decisions Support in the Rio Salado Basin, Argentina

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sullivan, J.; Routh, D.; Tellman, B.; Doyle, C.; Tomlin, J. N.

    2017-12-01

    The Rio Salado River Basin in Argentina is an economically important region that generates 25-30 percent of Argentina's grain and meat production. Between 2000-2011, floods in the basin caused nearly US$4.5 billion in losses and affected 5.5 million people. With the goal of developing cost-efficient flood monitoring and prediction capabilities in the Rio Salado Basin to support decision making, Cloud to Street is developing satellite based analytics to cover information gaps and improve monitoring capacity. This talk will showcase the Flood Risk Dashboard developed by Cloud to Street to support monitoring and decision-making at the level of provincial and national water management agencies in the Rio Salado Watershed. The Dashboard is based on analyzing thousands of MODIS, Landsat, and Sentinel scenes in Google Earth Engine to reconstruct the spatial history of flooding in the basin. The tool, iteratively designed with the end-user, shows a history of floodable areas with specific return times, exposed land uses and population, precipitation hyetographs, and spatial and temporal flood trends in the basin. These trends are used to understand both the impact of past flood mitigation investments (i.e. wetland reconstruction) and identify shifting flood risks. Based on this experience, we will also describe best practices on making remote sensing "flood dashboards" for water agencies.

  6. Improving Flood Risk Management for California's Central Valley: How the State Developed a Toolbox for Large, System-wide Studies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pingel, N.; Liang, Y.; Bindra, A.

    2016-12-01

    More than 1 million Californians live and work in the floodplains of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley where flood risks are among the highest in the nation. In response to this threat to people, property and the environment, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) has been called to action to improve flood risk management. This has transpired through significant advances in development of flood information and tools, analysis, and planning. Senate Bill 5 directed DWR to prepare the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan (CVFPP) and update it every 5 years. A key component of this aggressive planning approach is answering the question: What is the current flood risk, and how would proposed improvements change flood risk throughout the system? Answering this question is a substantial challenge due to the size and complexity of the watershed and flood control system. The watershed is roughly 42,000 sq mi, and flows are controlled by numerous reservoirs, bypasses, and levees. To overcome this challenge, the State invested in development of a comprehensive analysis "tool box" through various DWR programs. Development of the tool box included: collection of hydro-meteorological, topographic, geotechnical, and economic data; development of rainfall-runoff, reservoir operation, hydraulic routing, and flood risk analysis models; and development of specialized applications and computing schemes to accelerate the analysis. With this toolbox, DWR is analyzing flood hazard, flood control system performance, exposure and vulnerability of people and property to flooding, consequence of flooding for specific events, and finally flood risk for a range of CVFPP alternatives. Based on the results, DWR will put forward a State Recommended Plan in the 2017 CVFPP. Further, the value of the analysis tool box extends beyond the CVFPP. It will serve as a foundation for other flood studies for years to come and has already been successfully applied for inundation mapping to support emergency

  7. Nuclear reactor equipped with a flooding tank and a residual heat removal and emergency cooling system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schabert, H.P.; Winkler, F.

    1975-01-01

    A description is given of a nuclear reactor such as a pressurized-water reactor or the like which is equipped with a flooding tank and a residual heat removal and emergency cooling system. The flooding tank is arranged within the containment shell at an elevation above the upper edge of the reactor core and contains a liquid for flooding the reactor core in the event of a loss of coolant

  8. Identification of flood-rich and flood-poor periods in flood series

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mediero, Luis; Santillán, David; Garrote, Luis

    2015-04-01

    Recently, a general concern about non-stationarity of flood series has arisen, as changes in catchment response can be driven by several factors, such as climatic and land-use changes. Several studies to detect trends in flood series at either national or trans-national scales have been conducted. Trends are usually detected by the Mann-Kendall test. However, the results of this test depend on the starting and ending year of the series, which can lead to different results in terms of the period considered. The results can be conditioned to flood-poor and flood-rich periods located at the beginning or end of the series. A methodology to identify statistically significant flood-rich and flood-poor periods is developed, based on the comparison between the expected sampling variability of floods when stationarity is assumed and the observed variability of floods in a given series. The methodology is applied to a set of long series of annual maximum floods, peaks over threshold and counts of annual occurrences in peaks over threshold series observed in Spain in the period 1942-2009. Mediero et al. (2014) found a general decreasing trend in flood series in some parts of Spain that could be caused by a flood-rich period observed in 1950-1970, placed at the beginning of the flood series. The results of this study support the findings of Mediero et al. (2014), as a flood-rich period in 1950-1970 was identified in most of the selected sites. References: Mediero, L., Santillán, D., Garrote, L., Granados, A. Detection and attribution of trends in magnitude, frequency and timing of floods in Spain, Journal of Hydrology, 517, 1072-1088, 2014.

  9. Aquatic chemistry of flood events

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klavins, Maris; Rodinov, Valery

    2015-04-01

    During flood events a major discharge of water and dissolved substances happens. However flood waters very much differs from water composition during low-water events. Aquatic chemistry of flood waters also is of importance at the calculation of loadings as well as they might have major impact on water quality in receiving water bodies (lakes, coastal waters and seas). Further flood regime of rivers is subjected to changes due to climate change and growing impact of human activities. The aim of this study is to analyse water chemical composition changes during flood events in respect to low water periods, character of high-water events and characteristics of the corresponding basin. Within this study, the concentrations of major dissolved substances in the major rivers of Latvia have been studied using monitoring data as well as field studies during high water/ low water events. As territories of studies flows of substances in river basins/subbasins with different land-use character and different anthropogenic impacts has been studied to calculate export values depending on the land-use character. Impact of relations between dissolved substances and relations in respect to budgets has been calculated. The dynamics of DOC, nutrient and major dissolved substance flows depending on landuse pattern and soil properties in Latvia has been described, including emissions by industrial and agricultural production. In these changes evidently climate change signals can be identified. The water chemistry of a large number of rivers during flood events has been determined and the possible impact of water chemical composition on DOC and nutrient flows has been evaluated. Long-term changes (1977-2013) of concentrations of dissolved substances do not follow linear trends but rather show oscillating patterns, indicating impact of natural factors, e.g. changing hydrological and climatic conditions. There is a positive correlation between content of inert dissolved substances and

  10. Mass and energy analysis of the ions in a plasma flood system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wooding, A.C.; Armour, D.G.; Berg, J.A. van den; Holmes, A.J.T.; Burgess, C.; Goldberg, R.D.

    2005-01-01

    Plasma flood systems, capable of providing a copious supply of electrons are used in ion implanters to control wafer charging and provide effective space charge neutralisation of the ion beam in the post-analysis/post-deceleration section of the beamline. Under appropriate conditions the plasma from the flood system interacts with the ion beam and this bridging leads to an enhanced beam transport efficiency in the final critical stage of the beamline. The effectiveness of this process depends on the properties of the plasma emanating from the system. In this study, a plasma analyser comprising a double hemi-spherical electrostatic energy analyser and a quadrupole mass spectrometer, was used to measure the energy distributions of all the ion species leaving a magnetically confined argon plasma, generated in the discharge chamber of a conventional flood neutraliser. The energy distributions extended to surprisingly high energies and the peak structures depended strongly on discharge voltage, discharge current and gas pressure. The nature of these dependencies was complex with both the pressure and arc current affecting the way in which the ion energy distributions depended on arc voltage. In all cases, multiply charged ions played a significant role in determining the nature of the ion energy distributions

  11. Mass and energy analysis of the ions in a plasma flood system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wooding, A.C. [Institute of Materials Research, University of Salford, Salford M54WT (United Kingdom); Armour, D.G. [Institute of Materials Research, University of Salford, Salford M54WT (United Kingdom); Berg, J.A. van den [Institute of Materials Research, University of Salford, Salford M54WT (United Kingdom)]. E-mail: j.a.vandenberg@salford.ac.uk; Holmes, A.J.T. [Marcham Scientific, Hungerford, Berks RG17 0LH (United Kingdom); Burgess, C. [Applied Materials UK Ltd., Foundry Lane, Horsham, West Sussex RH13 5PX (United Kingdom); Goldberg, R.D. [Applied Materials UK Ltd., Foundry Lane, Horsham, West Sussex RH13 5PX (United Kingdom)

    2005-08-01

    Plasma flood systems, capable of providing a copious supply of electrons are used in ion implanters to control wafer charging and provide effective space charge neutralisation of the ion beam in the post-analysis/post-deceleration section of the beamline. Under appropriate conditions the plasma from the flood system interacts with the ion beam and this bridging leads to an enhanced beam transport efficiency in the final critical stage of the beamline. The effectiveness of this process depends on the properties of the plasma emanating from the system. In this study, a plasma analyser comprising a double hemi-spherical electrostatic energy analyser and a quadrupole mass spectrometer, was used to measure the energy distributions of all the ion species leaving a magnetically confined argon plasma, generated in the discharge chamber of a conventional flood neutraliser. The energy distributions extended to surprisingly high energies and the peak structures depended strongly on discharge voltage, discharge current and gas pressure. The nature of these dependencies was complex with both the pressure and arc current affecting the way in which the ion energy distributions depended on arc voltage. In all cases, multiply charged ions played a significant role in determining the nature of the ion energy distributions.

  12. Flood Risk Mapping Using Flow Energy Equation and Geographic Information System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    pourya Javan

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Flooding and its damages are not only found uplift water level in a region. In other words, the depth and speed parameters together have determining the level of flood risk at each point. This subject is visible in flooded plain with low height and high speed of 2 meters per second, which damages are extensive. According to the criteria of having both velocity and flow depth in the governing equation to the flows energy, this equation seems appropriate to analysis in this study. Various methods have been proposed for increase accuracy in flood zoning with different return periods and risks associated with it in land border of river. For example, some of these methods are considered factors such as analysis of past flooding in the area affected by floods, hydrological factors and consideration of hydraulic elements affecting in flood zoning (such as flow velocity. This paper investigates the effect of flood zoning by the energy flow in the areas affected by floods. Also risk due to flood based on energy flow in each section of the river is compared by the proposed graphs of hazard interval and other done flood zoning in this field. In this study, the FORDO river has been selected as the case study. This river is part of the rivers located in the city of QOM KAHAK. The characteristics of river in upstream and downstream are mountain, young and stable and adult, respectively. Also this river in different seasons is exposed the flood damage. The proposed method in this study can be improving recognition accuracy of flood risk in areas affected by flood. Also, this method facilitate the identify parts of the river bed, that is affected by severe flooding, for decision making to improve rivers organizing.

  13. Introduction to monitoring dynamic environmental phenomena of the world using satellite data collection systems, 1978

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carter, William Douglas; Paulson, Richard W.

    1979-01-01

    The rapid development of satellite technology, especially in the area of radio transmission and imaging systems, makes it possible to monitor dynamic surface phenomena of the Earth in considerable detail. The monitoring systems that have been developed are compatible with standard monitoring systems such as snow, stream, and rain gages; wind, temperature and humidity measuring instruments; tiltmeters and seismic event counters. Supported by appropriate power, radios and antennae, remote stations can be left unattended for at least 1 year and consistently relay local information via polar orbiting or geostationary satellites. These data, in conjunction with timely Landsat images, can provide a basis for more accurate estimates on snowfall, water runoff, reservoir level changes, flooding, drought effects, and vegetation trends and may be of help in forecasting volcanic eruptions. These types of information are critical for resource inventory and development, especially in developing countries where remote regions are commonly difficult to access. This paper introduces the reader to the systems available, describes their features and limitations, and provides suggestions on how to employ them. An extensive bibliography is provided for those who wish more information.

  14. Impacts of adaptive flood management strategies on the Socio-Hydrological system in Ganges - Brahmaputra river basin, Bangladesh

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sung, K.; Jeong, H.; Sangwan, N.; Yu, D. J.

    2017-12-01

    Human societies have tried to prevent floods by building robust infrastructure such as levees or dams. However, some scholars raise a doubt to this approach because of a lack of adaptiveness to environmental and societal changes in a long-term. Thus, a growing number of studies now suggest adopting new strategies in flood management to reinforce an adapt capacity to the long-term flood risk. This study addresses this issue by developing a conceptual mathematical model exploring how flood management strategies effect to the dynamics human-flood interaction, ultimately the flood resilience in a long-term. Especially, our model is motivated by the community-based flood protection system in southwest coastal area in Bangladesh. We developed several conceptual flood management strategies and investigated the interplay between those strategies and community's capacity to cope with floods. We additionally analyzed how external disturbances (sea level rise, water tide level change, and outside economic development) alter the adaptive capacity to flood risks. The results of this study reveal that the conventional flood management has potential vulnerabilities as external disturbances increase. Our results also highlight the needs of the adaptive strategy as a new paradigm in flood management which is able to feedback to the social and hydrological conditions. These findings provide insights on the resilience-based, adaptive strategies which can build flood resilience under global change.

  15. Origin, enzymatic response and fate of dissolved organic matter during flood and non-flood conditions in a river-floodplain system of the Danube (Austria).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sieczko, Anna; Peduzzi, Peter

    2014-01-01

    Spectroscopic techniques and extracellular enzyme activity measurements were combined with assessments of bacterial secondary production (BSP) to elucidate flood-pulse-linked differences in carbon (C) sources and related microbial processes in a river-floodplain system near Vienna (Austria). Surface connection with the main channel significantly influenced the quantity and quality of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in floodplain backwaters. The highest values of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and chromophoric DOM (CDOM) were observed during the peak of the flood, when DOC increased from 1.36 to 4.37 mg l -1 and CDOM from 2.94 to 14.32 m -1 . The flood introduced DOC which consisted of more allochthonously-derived, aromatic compounds. Bacterial enzymatic activity, as a proxy to track the response to changes in DOM, indicated elevated utilization of imported allochthonous material. Based on the enzyme measurements, new parameters were calculated: metabolic effort and enzymatic indices (EEA 1 and EEA 2). During connection, bacterial glucosidase and protease activity were dominant, whereas during disconnected phases a switch to lignin degradation (phenol oxidase) occurred. The enzymatic activity analysis revealed that flooding mobilized reactive DOM, which then supported bacterial metabolism. No significant differences in overall BSP between the two phases were detected, indicating that heterogeneous sources of C sufficiently support BSP. The study demonstrates that floods are important for delivering DOM, which, despite its allochthonous origin, is reactive and can be effectively utilized by aquatic bacteria in this river-floodplain systems. The presence of active floodplains, characterized by hydrological connectivity with the main channel, creates the opportunity to process allochthonous DOC. This has potential consequences for carbon flux, enhancing C sequestration and mineralization processes in this river-floodplain system.

  16. Responses of an Agricultural Soil Microbiome to Flooding with Seawater after Managed Coastal Realignment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kamilla S. Sjøgaard

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Coastal areas have become more prone to flooding with seawater due to climate-change-induced sea-level rise and intensified storm surges. One way to cope with this issue is by “managed coastal realignment”, where low-lying coastal areas are no longer protected and instead flooded with seawater. How flooding with seawater impacts soil microbiomes and the biogeochemical cycling of elements is poorly understood. To address this, we conducted a microcosm experiment using soil cores collected at the nature restoration project site Gyldensteen Strand (Denmark, which were flooded with seawater and monitored over six months. Throughout the experiment, biogeochemical analyses, microbial community fingerprinting and the quantification of marker genes documented clear shifts in microbiome composition and activity. The flooding with seawater initially resulted in accelerated heterotrophic activity that entailed high ammonium production and net removal of nitrogen from the system, also demonstrated by a concurrent increase in the abundances of marker genes for ammonium oxidation and denitrification. Due to the depletion of labile soil organic matter, microbial activity decreased after approximately four months. The event of flooding caused the largest shifts in microbiome composition with the availability of labile organic matter subsequently being the most important driver for the succession in microbiome composition in soils flooded with seawater.

  17. The potential of crowdsourcing and mobile technology to support flood disaster risk reduction

    Science.gov (United States)

    See, Linda; McCallum, Ian; Liu, Wei; Mechler, Reinhard; Keating, Adriana; Hochrainer-Stigler, Stefan; Mochizuki, Junko; Fritz, Steffen; Dugar, Sumit; Arestegui, Michael; Szoenyi, Michael; Laso-Bayas, Juan-Carlos; Burek, Peter; French, Adam; Moorthy, Inian

    2016-04-01

    The last decade has seen a rise in citizen science and crowdsourcing for carrying out a variety of tasks across a number of different fields, most notably the collection of data such as the identification of species (e.g. eBird and iNaturalist) and the classification of images (e.g. Galaxy Zoo and Geo-Wiki). Combining human computing with the proliferation of mobile technology has resulted in vast amounts of geo-located data that have considerable value across multiple domains including flood disaster risk reduction. Crowdsourcing technologies, in the form of online mapping, are now being utilized to great effect in post-disaster mapping and relief efforts, e.g. the activities of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, complementing official channels of relief (e.g. Haiti, Nepal and New York). Disaster event monitoring efforts have been further complemented with the use of social media (e.g. twitter for earthquakes, flood monitoring, and fire detection). Much of the activity in this area has focused on ex-post emergency management while there is considerable potential for utilizing crowdsourcing and mobile technology for vulnerability assessment, early warning and to bolster resilience to flood events. This paper examines the use of crowdsourcing and mobile technology for measuring and monitoring flood hazards, exposure to floods, and vulnerability, drawing upon examples from the literature and ongoing projects on flooding and food security at IIASA.

  18. Rapid-response flood mapping during Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria by the Global Flood Partnership (GFP)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cohen, S.; Alfieri, L.; Brakenridge, G. R.; Coughlan, E.; Galantowicz, J. F.; Hong, Y.; Kettner, A.; Nghiem, S. V.; Prados, A. I.; Rudari, R.; Salamon, P.; Trigg, M.; Weerts, A.

    2017-12-01

    The Global Flood Partnership (GFP; https://gfp.jrc.ec.europa.eu) is a multi-disciplinary group of scientists, operational agencies and flood risk managers focused on developing efficient and effective global flood management tools. Launched in 2014, its aim is to establish a partnership for global flood forecasting, monitoring and impact assessment to strengthen preparedness and response and to reduce global disaster losses. International organizations, the private sector, national authorities, universities and research agencies contribute to the GFP on a voluntary basis and benefit from a global network focused on flood risk reduction. At the onset of Hurricane Harvey, GFP was `activated' using email requests via its mailing service. Soon after, flood inundation maps, based on remote sensing analysis and modeling, were shared by different agencies, institutions, and individuals. These products were disseminated, to varying degrees of effectiveness, to federal, state and local agencies via emails and data-sharing services. This generated a broad data-sharing network which was utilized at the early stages of Hurricane Irma's impact, just two weeks after Harvey. In this presentation, we will describe the extent and chronology of the GFP response to both Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. We will assess the potential usefulness of this effort for event managers in various types of organizations and discuss future improvements to be implemented.

  19. Hydrochemical aspects of the Aue pit flooding

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Meyer, J.; Jenk, U.; Schuppan, W.; Knappik, R.

    1998-01-01

    WISMUT is conducting controlled flooding of underground mines at the Schlema-Alberoda and Poehla sites. Flooding of the Poehla mine lasted from January 1992 through September 1995. Flooding at the Niederschlema-Alberoda site began in July 1990 and will continue to approximately 2002. In mid-1998 the flood level had reached the - 420 m level which is about 1,400 m above the lowest mine level. Only ground waters with low mineral and pollutant content are used for flooding purposes. Typically, the flooding process results in elevated levels of mineral salts and of uranium, radium, arsenic, iron, and manganese in flooding waters. However, the mobilised part of these contaminants represents only a small fraction of potential concentrations contained in the surrounding rock. Geochemical and hydrochemical conditions at both mines are characterised by the presence of carbonate buffers and by neutral pH and intermediate to low Eh. Decrease due to oxidation of sulphides in the long term is unlikely. Environmentally relevant metals in flooding waters may be dissolved, colloidal, or suspended solids with uranium present as uranyl carbonate complexes. Intensity of mobilisation is primarily a function of kinetic processes. Post flooding conditions at the Poehla subsite exhibit specific hydrochemical phenomena such as extremely reduced SO 4 concentrations and an increase in Ra concentrations over time. Continued flood monitoring will provide the basis for more in-depth interpretation and prognosis of contaminant mobilisation. Current investigations focus on technically feasible in situ control of mine flooding at the Schlema-Alberoda site to reduce contaminant mobilisation. At both sites water treatment plants are either on stream or under construction. (orig.)

  20. Socio-hydrology: conceptualising human-flood interactions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    G. Di Baldassarre

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available Over history, humankind has tended to settle near streams because of the role of rivers as transportation corridors and the fertility of riparian areas. However, human settlements in floodplains have been threatened by the risk of flooding. Possible responses have been to resettle away and/or modify the river system by building flood control structures. This has led to a complex web of interactions and feedback mechanisms between hydrological and social processes in settled floodplains. This paper is an attempt to conceptualise these interplays for hypothetical human-flood systems. We develop a simple, dynamic model to represent the interactions and feedback loops between hydrological and social processes. The model is then used to explore the dynamics of the human-flood system and the effect of changing individual characteristics, including external forcing such as technological development. The results show that the conceptual model is able to reproduce reciprocal effects between floods and people as well as the emergence of typical patterns. For instance, when levees are built or raised to protect floodplain areas, their presence not only reduces the frequency of flooding, but also exacerbates high water levels. Then, because of this exacerbation, higher flood protection levels are required by society. As a result, more and more flooding events are avoided, but rare and catastrophic events take place.

  1. Numerical modelling of the impact of flood wave cyclicality on the stability of levees

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Franczyk Anna

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Sensitivity analysis applied to the flooding process is discussed in the paper. The analysis was done as part of the ISMOP project devoted to elaborating and designing a complex system for embankment monitoring and threat forecasting. The analysis was performed using selected geotechnical parameters that describe embankment state. It was shown that the sensitivity analysis method is very practical for detecting places where the largest vertical displacement and pore pressure distribution are observed. The sensitivity analysis was carried out for a single flood wave numerical experiment as well as for a double successive flood wave experiment. Comparison of the results allowed us to detect the places where the biggest differences in total relative sensitivity values are observed. Plots of these differences can help to indicate the particular places within the embankment that are the most influenced by successive flood waves and should be especially examined during field experiments as part of the ISMOP project.

  2. PILOT STUDIES WITH A PHOTOGRAMMETRIC GLACIER LAKE OUTBURST FLOOD EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    H. G. Maas

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs depict an environmental risk with an increasing damage potential in many regions of the world. GLOFs are often caused by glacier margin lakes, which suddenly find a drainage path underneath the bottom of a glacier, which is destabilized and retreating as a consequence of local or global climate changes. In a typical GLOF event, a glacier margin lake may drain completely in 24 hours, causing a large flood wave in the area downstream the glacier. The paper documents some recent GLOF events in the Northern Patagonian Icefield (Chile and presents a terrestrial photogrammetric glacier margin lake monitoring system. The system is based on a camera taking images at regular time intervals. In these images, variations of the water level can be detected by tracking the water-land interface at pre-defined image spots. Due to the drainage mechanism, which is characterized by progressive erosion and melting at the bottom of the glacier, GLOFs are indicated by a progressive water level drop in the lake. Water level changes may be detected with subpixel accuracy by image sequence processing methods. If a 3D model of the lake bottom topography (or at least one height profile through the lake exists, water level changes in monoscopic image sequences may be transformed into volume loss. The basic idea herein is the intersection of a terrain profile with a water level detected in the image and projected into object space. The camera orientation is determined through a GPS-supported photogrammetric network. Camera orientation changes, which may for instance be induced by wind, can be compensated by tracking some fiducial marks in the image. The system has been used in a pilot study at two glacier margin lakes in the Northern Patagonian Icefield. These lakes have a depth of about 80 - 100 meters. The larger one has a length of 5 km and a maximum volume of about 200,000,000 cubic meters. During the pilot study, several GLOF events

  3. Sex-specific responses to winter flooding, spring waterlogging and post-flooding recovery in Populus deltoides.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miao, Ling-Feng; Yang, Fan; Han, Chun-Yu; Pu, Yu-Jin; Ding, Yang; Zhang, Li-Jia

    2017-05-31

    Winter flooding events are common in some rivers and streams due to dam constructions, and flooding and waterlogging inhibit the growth of trees in riparian zones. This study investigated sex-specific morphological, physiological and ultrastructural responses to various durations of winter flooding and spring waterlogging stresses, and post-flooding recovery characteristics in Populus deltoides. There were no significant differences in the morphological, ultrastructural and the majority of physiological traits in trees subjected to medium and severe winter flooding stresses, suggesting that males and females of P. deltoides were winter flooding tolerant, and insensitive to winter flooding duration. Males were more tolerant to winter flooding stress in terms of photosynthesis and chlorophyll fluorescence than females. Females displayed greater oxidative damage due to flooding stress than males. Males developed more efficient antioxidant enzymatic systems to control reactive oxygen species. Both sexes had similarly strong post-flooding recovery capabilities in terms of plant growth, and physiological and ultrastructural parameters. However, Males had better recovery capabilities in terms of pigment content. These results increase the understanding of poplars's adaptation to winter flooding stress. They also elucidate sex-specific differences in response to flooding stress during the dormant season, and during post-flooding recovery periods.

  4. Flood Risk and Flood hazard maps - Visualisation of hydrological risks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Spachinger, Karl; Dorner, Wolfgang; Metzka, Rudolf; Serrhini, Kamal; Fuchs, Sven

    2008-01-01

    Hydrological models are an important basis of flood forecasting and early warning systems. They provide significant data on hydrological risks. In combination with other modelling techniques, such as hydrodynamic models, they can be used to assess the extent and impact of hydrological events. The new European Flood Directive forces all member states to evaluate flood risk on a catchment scale, to compile maps of flood hazard and flood risk for prone areas, and to inform on a local level about these risks. Flood hazard and flood risk maps are important tools to communicate flood risk to different target groups. They provide compiled information to relevant public bodies such as water management authorities, municipalities, or civil protection agencies, but also to the broader public. For almost each section of a river basin, run-off and water levels can be defined based on the likelihood of annual recurrence, using a combination of hydrological and hydrodynamic models, supplemented by an analysis of historical records and mappings. In combination with data related to the vulnerability of a region risk maps can be derived. The project RISKCATCH addressed these issues of hydrological risk and vulnerability assessment focusing on the flood risk management process. Flood hazard maps and flood risk maps were compiled for Austrian and German test sites taking into account existing national and international guidelines. These maps were evaluated by eye-tracking using experimental graphic semiology. Sets of small-scale as well as large-scale risk maps were presented to test persons in order to (1) study reading behaviour as well as understanding and (2) deduce the most attractive components that are essential for target-oriented risk communication. A cognitive survey asking for negative and positive aspects and complexity of each single map complemented the experimental graphic semiology. The results indicate how risk maps can be improved to fit the needs of different user

  5. A Seamless Framework for Global Water Cycle Monitoring and Prediction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheffield, J.; Wood, E. F.; Chaney, N.; Fisher, C. K.; Caylor, K. K.

    2013-12-01

    The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Water Strategy ('From Observations to Decisions') recognizes that 'water is essential for ensuring food and energy security, for facilitating poverty reduction and health security, and for the maintenance of ecosystems and biodiversity', and that water cycle data and observations are critical for improved water management and water security - especially in less developed regions. The GEOSS Water Strategy has articulated a number of goals for improved water management, including flood and drought preparedness, that include: (i) facilitating the use of Earth Observations for water cycle observations; (ii) facilitating the acquisition, processing, and distribution of data products needed for effective management; (iii) providing expertise, information systems, and datasets to the global, regional, and national water communities. There are several challenges that must be met to advance our capability to provide near real-time water cycle monitoring, early warning of hydrological hazards (floods and droughts) and risk assessment under climate change, regionally and globally. Current approaches to monitoring and predicting hydrological hazards are limited in many parts of the world, and especially in developing countries where national capacity is limited and monitoring networks are inadequate. This presentation describes the development of a seamless monitoring and prediction framework at all time scales that allows for consistent assessment of water variability from historic to current conditions, and from seasonal and decadal predictions to climate change projections. At the center of the framework is an experimental, global water cycle monitoring and seasonal forecast system that has evolved out of regional and continental systems for the US and Africa. The system is based on land surface hydrological modeling that is driven by satellite remote sensing precipitation to predict current hydrological conditions

  6. May flood-poor periods be more dangerous than flood-rich periods?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salinas, Jose Luis; Di Baldassarre, Giuliano; Viglione, Alberto; Kuil, Linda; Bloeschl, Guenter

    2014-05-01

    perception of risk and, consequently, people preparedness remains high. Conversely, long periods without floods will serve to diminish awareness, since the memory of floods tends to be short (i.e., people tend to forget quickly), finally leading communities to take too high risks. Di Baldassarre, G., A. Viglione, G. Carr, L. Kuil, J.L. Salinas and G. Blöschl (2013) Socio-hydrology: conceptualising human-flood interactions, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 17, 3295-3303, doi:10.5194/hess-17-3295-2013. Viglione, A., G. Di Baldassarre, L. Brandimarte, L. Kuil, G. Carr, J.L. Salinas, A. Scolobig and G. Blöschl (2013) Insights from socio-hydrology modelling on dealing with flood risk: roles of collective memory, risk-taking attitude and trust, Journal of Hydrology, accepted.

  7. Monitoring storm tide and flooding from Hurricane Matthew along the Atlantic coast of the United States, October 2016

    Science.gov (United States)

    Frantz, Eric R.; Byrne,, Michael L.; Caldwell, Andral W.; Harden, Stephen L.

    2017-11-02

    IntroductionHurricane Matthew moved adjacent to the coasts of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The hurricane made landfall once near McClellanville, South Carolina, on October 8, 2016, as a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) deployed a temporary monitoring network of storm-tide sensors at 284 sites along the Atlantic coast from Florida to North Carolina to record the timing, areal extent, and magnitude of hurricane storm tide and coastal flooding generated by Hurricane Matthew. Storm tide, as defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is the water-level rise generated by a combination of storm surge and astronomical tide during a coastal storm.The deployment for Hurricane Matthew was the largest deployment of storm-tide sensors in USGS history and was completed as part of a coordinated Federal emergency response as outlined by the Stafford Act (Public Law 92–288, 42 U.S.C. 5121–5207) under a directed mission assignment by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In total, 543 high-water marks (HWMs) also were collected after Hurricane Matthew, and this was the second largest HWM recovery effort in USGS history after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.During the hurricane, real-time water-level data collected at temporary rapid deployment gages (RDGs) and long-term USGS streamgage stations were relayed immediately for display on the USGS Flood Event Viewer (https://stn.wim.usgs.gov/FEV/#MatthewOctober2016). These data provided emergency managers and responders with critical information for tracking flood-effected areas and directing assistance to effected communities. Data collected from this hurricane can be used to calibrate and evaluate the performance of storm-tide models for maximum and incremental water level and flood extent, and the site-specific effects of storm tide on natural and anthropogenic features of the environment.

  8. IT infrastructure enabling open access for flood risk preparedness in South Africa

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Van Zyl, TL

    2009-05-01

    Full Text Available The paper focuses on the information technology infrastructure required for the evaluation and monitoring of risk relating to floods in South Africa. It may be argued that in the context of developing countries, flood preparedness is more valuable...

  9. Feedbacks among Floods, Pioneer Woody Vegetation, and Channel Change in Sand-Bed Rivers: Insights from Field Studies of Controlled Flood Releases and Models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilcox, A. C.; Shafroth, P. B.; Lightbody, A.; Stella, J. C.; Bywater-Reyes, S.; Kiu, L.; Skorko, K.

    2012-04-01

    To investigate feedbacks between flow, geomorphic processes, and pioneer riparian vegetation in sand-bed rivers, we are combining field, hydraulic modeling, and laboratory simulations. Field studies have examined the response of woody riparian seedlings and channel morphology to prescribed dam-released floods that have been designed in part to maintain a native riparian woodland system on the Bill Williams River, Arizona, USA. Through monitoring of floods over a 7-year period, we have observed temporal and spatial variations in channel response. Floods have produced geomorphic and vegetation responses that varied with distance downstream of a dam, with scour and associated seedling mortality closer to the dam and aggradation and burial-induced mortality in a downstream reach with greater sediment supply. We also have observed that as vegetation grows beyond the seedling stage, its stabilizing effect on bars and its drag effect on flow progressively increases, such that floods of similar sizes but at different times may produce markedly different downstream responses as a function of vegetation characteristics. We also observed greater mortality among nonnative Tamarix spp. (tamarisk) seedlings than among native Salix gooddingii (Goodding's willow) seedlings, likely as a result of the greater first-year growth of willow relative to tamarisk. Combining field observations with modeling predictions of local hydraulics for the flood events we have studied is being used to draw linkages between hydraulics, channel change, and plant response at the patch and bar scale. In addition, mechanistic linkages are being examined using a field-scale laboratory stream channel, where seedlings of Tamarix spp. (tamarisk) and Populus fremontii (cottonwood) were planted and subjected to floods with varying sediment feed rate and plant configurations. The floods conveyed by our model channel were generally insufficient to scour the woody seedlings we planted, but changes in bar size and

  10. Flood impacts on a water distribution network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arrighi, Chiara; Tarani, Fabio; Vicario, Enrico; Castelli, Fabio

    2017-12-01

    Floods cause damage to people, buildings and infrastructures. Water distribution systems are particularly exposed, since water treatment plants are often located next to the rivers. Failure of the system leads to both direct losses, for instance damage to equipment and pipework contamination, and indirect impact, since it may lead to service disruption and thus affect populations far from the event through the functional dependencies of the network. In this work, we present an analysis of direct and indirect damages on a drinking water supply system, considering the hazard of riverine flooding as well as the exposure and vulnerability of active system components. The method is based on interweaving, through a semi-automated GIS procedure, a flood model and an EPANET-based pipe network model with a pressure-driven demand approach, which is needed when modelling water distribution networks in highly off-design conditions. Impact measures are defined and estimated so as to quantify service outage and potential pipe contamination. The method is applied to the water supply system of the city of Florence, Italy, serving approximately 380 000 inhabitants. The evaluation of flood impact on the water distribution network is carried out for different events with assigned recurrence intervals. Vulnerable elements exposed to the flood are identified and analysed in order to estimate their residual functionality and to simulate failure scenarios. Results show that in the worst failure scenario (no residual functionality of the lifting station and a 500-year flood), 420 km of pipework would require disinfection with an estimated cost of EUR 21 million, which is about 0.5 % of the direct flood losses evaluated for buildings and contents. Moreover, if flood impacts on the water distribution network are considered, the population affected by the flood is up to 3 times the population directly flooded.

  11. Monitoring flooding and vegetation on seasonally inundated floodplains with multifrequency polarimetric synthetic aperture radar

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hess, Laura Lorraine

    The ability of synthetic aperture radar to detect flooding and vegetation structure was evaluated for three seasonally inundated floodplain sites supporting a broad variety of wetland and upland vegetation types: two reaches of the Solimoes floodplain in the central Amazon, and the Magela Creek floodplain in Northern Territory, Australia. For each site, C- and L-band polarimetric Shuttle Imaging Radar-C (SIR-C) data was obtained at both high- and low-water stages. Inundation status and vegetation structure were documented simultaneous with the SIR-C acquisitions using low-altitude videography and ground measurements. SIR-C images were classified into cover states defined by vegetation physiognomy and presence of standing water, using a decision-tree model with backscattering coefficients at HH, VV, and HV polarizations as input variables. Classification accuracy was assessed using user's accuracy, producer's accuracy, and kappa coefficient for a test population of pixels. At all sites, both C- and L-band were necessary to accurately classify cover types with two dates. HH polarization was most. useful for distinguishing flooded from non-flooded vegetation (C-HH for macrophyte versus pasture, L-HH for flooded versus non-flooded forest), and cross-polarized L-band data provided the best separation between woody and non-woody vegetation. Increases in L-HH backscattering due to flooding were on the order of 3--4 dB for closed-canopy varzea and igapo forest, and 4--7 dB, for open Melaleuca woodland. The broad range of physiognomies and stand structures found in both herbaceous and woody wetland communities, combined with the variation in the amount of emergent canopy caused by water level fluctuations and phenologic changes, resulted in a large range in backscattering characteristics of wetland communities both within and between sites. High accuracies cannot be achieved for these communities using single-date, single-band, single-polarization data, particularly in the

  12. The influence of controlled floods on fine sediment storage in debris fan-affected canyons of the Colorado River basin

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mueller, Erich R.; Grams, Paul E.; Schmidt, John C.; Hazel, Joseph E.; Alexander, Jason S.; Kaplinski, Matt

    2014-01-01

    Prior to the construction of large dams on the Green and Colorado Rivers, annual floods aggraded sandbars in lateral flow-recirculation eddies with fine sediment scoured from the bed and delivered from upstream. Flows greater than normal dam operations may be used to mimic this process in an attempt to increase time-averaged sandbar size. These controlled floods may rebuild sandbars, but sediment deficit conditions downstream from the dams restrict the frequency that controlled floods produce beneficial results. Here, we integrate complimentary, long-term monitoring data sets from the Colorado River in Marble and Grand Canyons downstream from Glen Canyon dam and the Green River in the Canyon of Lodore downstream from Flaming Gorge dam. Since the mid-1990s, several controlled floods have occurred in these canyon rivers. These controlled floods scour fine sediment from the bed and build sandbars in eddies, thus increasing channel relief. These changes are short-lived, however, as interflood dam operations erode sandbars within several months to years. Controlled flood response and interflood changes in bed elevation are more variable in Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon, likely reflecting more variable fine sediment supply and stronger transience in channel bed sediment storage. Despite these differences, neither system shows a trend in fine-sediment storage during the period in which controlled floods were monitored. These results demonstrate that controlled floods build eddy sandbars and increase channel relief for short interflood periods, and this response may be typical in other dam-influenced canyon rivers. The degree to which these features persist depends on the frequency of controlled floods, but careful consideration of sediment supply is necessary to avoid increasing the long-term sediment deficit.

  13. Multivariate pluvial flood damage models

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Van Ootegem, Luc; Verhofstadt, Elsy; Van Herck, Kristine; Creten, Tom

    2015-01-01

    Depth–damage-functions, relating the monetary flood damage to the depth of the inundation, are commonly used in the case of fluvial floods (floods caused by a river overflowing). We construct four multivariate damage models for pluvial floods (caused by extreme rainfall) by differentiating on the one hand between ground floor floods and basement floods and on the other hand between damage to residential buildings and damage to housing contents. We do not only take into account the effect of flood-depth on damage, but also incorporate the effects of non-hazard indicators (building characteristics, behavioural indicators and socio-economic variables). By using a Tobit-estimation technique on identified victims of pluvial floods in Flanders (Belgium), we take into account the effect of cases of reported zero damage. Our results show that the flood depth is an important predictor of damage, but with a diverging impact between ground floor floods and basement floods. Also non-hazard indicators are important. For example being aware of the risk just before the water enters the building reduces content damage considerably, underlining the importance of warning systems and policy in this case of pluvial floods. - Highlights: • Prediction of damage of pluvial floods using also non-hazard information • We include ‘no damage cases’ using a Tobit model. • The damage of flood depth is stronger for ground floor than for basement floods. • Non-hazard indicators are especially important for content damage. • Potential gain of policies that increase awareness of flood risks

  14. Multivariate pluvial flood damage models

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Van Ootegem, Luc [HIVA — University of Louvain (Belgium); SHERPPA — Ghent University (Belgium); Verhofstadt, Elsy [SHERPPA — Ghent University (Belgium); Van Herck, Kristine; Creten, Tom [HIVA — University of Louvain (Belgium)

    2015-09-15

    Depth–damage-functions, relating the monetary flood damage to the depth of the inundation, are commonly used in the case of fluvial floods (floods caused by a river overflowing). We construct four multivariate damage models for pluvial floods (caused by extreme rainfall) by differentiating on the one hand between ground floor floods and basement floods and on the other hand between damage to residential buildings and damage to housing contents. We do not only take into account the effect of flood-depth on damage, but also incorporate the effects of non-hazard indicators (building characteristics, behavioural indicators and socio-economic variables). By using a Tobit-estimation technique on identified victims of pluvial floods in Flanders (Belgium), we take into account the effect of cases of reported zero damage. Our results show that the flood depth is an important predictor of damage, but with a diverging impact between ground floor floods and basement floods. Also non-hazard indicators are important. For example being aware of the risk just before the water enters the building reduces content damage considerably, underlining the importance of warning systems and policy in this case of pluvial floods. - Highlights: • Prediction of damage of pluvial floods using also non-hazard information • We include ‘no damage cases’ using a Tobit model. • The damage of flood depth is stronger for ground floor than for basement floods. • Non-hazard indicators are especially important for content damage. • Potential gain of policies that increase awareness of flood risks.

  15. Developing an Approach to Prioritize River Restoration using Data Extracted from Flood Risk Information System Databases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vimal, S.; Tarboton, D. G.; Band, L. E.; Duncan, J. M.; Lovette, J. P.; Corzo, G.; Miles, B.

    2015-12-01

    Prioritizing river restoration requires information on river geometry. In many states in the US detailed river geometry has been collected for floodplain mapping and is available in Flood Risk Information Systems (FRIS). In particular, North Carolina has, for its 100 Counties, developed a database of numerous HEC-RAS models which are available through its Flood Risk Information System (FRIS). These models that include over 260 variables were developed and updated by numerous contractors. They contain detailed surveyed or LiDAR derived cross-sections and modeled flood extents for different extreme event return periods. In this work, over 4700 HEC-RAS models' data was integrated and upscaled to utilize detailed cross-section information and 100-year modelled flood extent information to enable river restoration prioritization for the entire state of North Carolina. We developed procedures to extract geomorphic properties such as entrenchment ratio, incision ratio, etc. from these models. Entrenchment ratio quantifies the vertical containment of rivers and thereby their vulnerability to flooding and incision ratio quantifies the depth per unit width. A map of entrenchment ratio for the whole state was derived by linking these model results to a geodatabase. A ranking of highly entrenched counties enabling prioritization for flood allowance and mitigation was obtained. The results were shared through HydroShare and web maps developed for their visualization using Google Maps Engine API.

  16. EMERGO : The Dutch flood risk system since 1986

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rijcken, T.

    2017-01-01

    PART I | A RESEARCH AND DESIGN PROJECT ABOUT FLOOD RISK POLICY SINCE 1986 The period between the Dutch flood disaster of 1953 and the year 2016 can be divided into two eras, separated by the year 1986, when the famous Eastern Scheldt barrier was completed. The perspective of water professionals on

  17. Columbia River System Operation Review final environmental impact statement. Appendix E: Flood control

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1995-11-01

    The System Operation Review (SOR) is a study and environmental compliance process being used by the three Federal agencies to analyze future operations of the system and river use issues. The goal of the SOR is to achieve a coordinated system operation strategy for the river that better meets the needs of all river users. This technical appendix addresses only the effects of alternative system operating strategies for managing the Columbia River system. The Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration, and Bureau of Reclamation conducted a scoping process consisting of a series of regionwide public meetings and solicitation of written comments in the summer of 1990. Comments on flood control issues were received from all parts of the Columbia river basin. This appendix includes issues raised in the public scoping process, as well as those brought for consideration by members of the Flood Control Work Group

  18. Flood Inundation Mapping and Management using RISAT-1 derived Flood Inundation Areas, Cartosat-1 DEM and a River Flow Model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuldeep, K.; Garg, P. K.; Garg, R. D.

    2017-12-01

    The frequent occurrence of repeated flood events in many regions of the world causing damage to human life and property has augmented the need for effective flood risk management. Microwave satellite data is becoming an indispensable asset for monitoring of many environmental and climatic applications as numerous space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors are offering the data with high spatial resolutions and multi-polarization capabilities. The implementation and execution of Flood mapping, monitoring and management applications has become easier with the availability of SAR data which has obvious advantages over optical data due to its all weather, day and night capabilities. In this study, the exploitation of the SAR dataset for hydraulic modelling and disaster management has been highlighted using feature extraction techniques for water area identification and water level extraction within the floodplain. The availability of high precision digital elevation model generated from the Cartosat-1 stereo pairs has enhanced the capability of retrieving the water depth maps by incorporating the SAR derived flood extent maps. This paper illustrates the flood event on June 2013 in Yamuna River, Haryana, India. The water surface profile computed by combining the topographic data with the RISAT-1 data accurately reflects the true water line. Water levels that were computed by carrying out the modelling using hydraulic model in HECRAS also suggest that the water surface profiles provided by the combined use of topographic data and SAR accurately reflect the true water line. The proposed approach has also been found better in extraction of inundation within vegetated areas.

  19. Flood Response System—A Case Study

    OpenAIRE

    Yogesh Kumar Singh; Upasana Dutta; T. S. Murugesh Prabhu; I. Prabu; Jitendra Mhatre; Manoj Khare; Sandeep Srivastava; Subasisha Dutta

    2017-01-01

    Flood Response System (FRS) is a network-enabled solution developed using open-source software. The system has query based flood damage assessment modules with outputs in the form of spatial maps and statistical databases. FRS effectively facilitates the management of post-disaster activities caused due to flood, like displaying spatial maps of area affected, inundated roads, etc., and maintains a steady flow of information at all levels with different access rights depending upon the critica...

  20. Safety system status monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lewis, J.R.; Morgenstern, M.H.; Rideout, T.H.; Cowley, P.J.

    1984-03-01

    The Pacific Northwest Laboratory has studied the safety aspects of monitoring the preoperational status of safety systems in nuclear power plants. The goals of the study were to assess for the NRC the effectiveness of current monitoring systems and procedures, to develop near-term guidelines for reducing human errors associated with monitoring safety system status, and to recommend a regulatory position on this issue. A review of safety system status monitoring practices indicated that current systems and procedures do not adequately aid control room operators in monitoring safety system status. This is true even of some systems and procedures installed to meet existing regulatory guidelines (Regulatory Guide 1.47). In consequence, this report suggests acceptance criteria for meeting the functional requirements of an adequate system for monitoring safety system status. Also suggested are near-term guidelines that could reduce the likelihood of human errors in specific, high-priority status monitoring tasks. It is recommended that (1) Regulatory Guide 1.47 be revised to address these acceptance criteria, and (2) the revised Regulatory Guide 1.47 be applied to all plants, including those built since the issuance of the original Regulatory Guide

  1. Safety system status monitoring

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Lewis, J.R.; Morgenstern, M.H.; Rideout, T.H.; Cowley, P.J.

    1984-03-01

    The Pacific Northwest Laboratory has studied the safety aspects of monitoring the preoperational status of safety systems in nuclear power plants. The goals of the study were to assess for the NRC the effectiveness of current monitoring systems and procedures, to develop near-term guidelines for reducing human errors associated with monitoring safety system status, and to recommend a regulatory position on this issue. A review of safety system status monitoring practices indicated that current systems and procedures do not adequately aid control room operators in monitoring safety system status. This is true even of some systems and procedures installed to meet existing regulatory guidelines (Regulatory Guide 1.47). In consequence, this report suggests acceptance criteria for meeting the functional requirements of an adequate system for monitoring safety system status. Also suggested are near-term guidelines that could reduce the likelihood of human errors in specific, high-priority status monitoring tasks. It is recommended that (1) Regulatory Guide 1.47 be revised to address these acceptance criteria, and (2) the revised Regulatory Guide 1.47 be applied to all plants, including those built since the issuance of the original Regulatory Guide.

  2. Study of CT Scan Flooding System at High Temperature and Pressure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, X. Y.

    2017-12-01

    CT scan flooding experiment can scan micro-pore in different flooding stages by the use of CT scan technology, without changing the external morphology and internal structure of the core, and observe the distribution characterization in pore medium of different flooding fluid under different pressure.thus,it can rebuilt the distribution images of oil-water distribution in different flooding stages. However,under extreme high pressure and temperature conditions,the CT scan system can not meet the requirements. Container of low density materials or thin shell can not resist high pressure,while high density materials or thick shell will cause attenuation and scattering of X-ray. The experiment uses a simple Ct scanning systems.X ray from a point light source passing trough a micro beryllium shell on High pressure stainless steal container,continuously irradiates the core holder that can continuously 360° rotate along the core axis. A rare earth intensifying screen behind the core holder emitting light when irradiated with X ray can show the core X ray section image. An optical camera record the core X ray images through a transparency high pressure glazing that placed on the High pressure stainless steal container.Thus,multiple core X ray section images can reconstruct the 3D core reconstruction after a series of data processing.The experiment shows that both the micro beryllium shell and rare earth intensifying screen can work in high temperature and high pressure environment in the stainless steal container. This way that X-ray passes through a thin layer of micro beryllium shell , not high pressure stainless steal shell,avoid the attenuation and scattering of X-ray from the container shell,while improving the high-pressure experiment requirements.

  3. Distillation Column Flooding Predictor

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    George E. Dzyacky

    2010-11-23

    /vapor traffic that produce increased contact area and lead to substantial increases in separation efficiency – which translates to a 10% increase in energy efficiency on a BTU/bbl basis. The Flooding Predictor™ operates on the principle that between five to sixty minutes in advance of a flooding event, certain column variables experience an oscillation, a pre-flood pattern. The pattern recognition system of the Flooding Predictor™ utilizes the mathematical first derivative of certain column variables to identify the column’s pre-flood pattern(s). This pattern is a very brief, highly repeatable, simultaneous movement among the derivative values of certain column variables. While all column variables experience negligible random noise generated from the natural frequency of the process, subtle pre-flood patterns are revealed among sub-sets of the derivative values of column variables as the column approaches its hydraulic limit. The sub-set of column variables that comprise the pre-flood pattern is identified empirically through in a two-step process. First, 2ndpoint’s proprietary off-line analysis tool is used to mine historical data for pre-flood patterns. Second, the column is flood-tested to fine-tune the pattern recognition for commissioning. Then the Flooding Predictor™ is implemented as closed-loop advanced control strategy on the plant’s distributed control system (DCS), thus automating control of the column at its hydraulic limit.

  4. Time-frequency Methods for Structural Health Monitoring

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pyayt, A.L.; Kozionov, A.P.; Mokhov, I.I.; Lang, B.; Meijer, R.J.; Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Sloot, P.M.A.

    2014-01-01

    Detection of early warning signals for the imminent failure of large and complex engineered structures is a daunting challenge with many open research questions. In this paper we report on novel ways to perform Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of flood protection systems (levees, earthen dikes and

  5. Time-frequency methods for structural health monitoring

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pyayt, A.L.; Kozionov, A.P.; Mokhov, I.I.; Lang, B.; Meijer, R.J.; Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Sloot, P.M.A.

    2014-01-01

    Detection of early warning signals for the imminent failure of large and complex engineered structures is a daunting challenge with many open research questions. In this paper we report on novel ways to perform Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of flood protection systems (levees, earthen dikes and

  6. 46 CFR 62.35-10 - Flooding safety.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 2 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Flooding safety. 62.35-10 Section 62.35-10 Shipping... Requirements for Specific Types of Automated Vital Systems § 62.35-10 Flooding safety. (a) Automatic bilge.... (b) Remote controls for flooding safety equipment must remain functional under flooding conditions to...

  7. RISK VIP: Evaluation of Flood Risk on the French Railway Network Using an Innovative GIS Approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cheetham Mark

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Flooding can have significant direct and indirect negative effects on a railway network affecting both infrastructure and rail operations. Such impacts include the delaying or cancelling of train services, damage to railway structures or the implementation of costly maintenance and monitoring programs to ensure the safety and performance of the railway system. Identifying sections of railway line at risk from flooding allows appropriate actions to be targeted at specific areas and contributes to an effective asset management plan. Flooding of railway infrastructure can have numerous sources including surface water run-off, insufficient capacity of hydraulic structures or the inundation of embankments located in floodplains. Consequences of flooding include the destabilisation of structures (surface erosion of embankments or the undermining of bridge foundations, differential settlement of structures and damage to the track structure. This paper details an innovative approach developed at the SNCF using a Geographic Information System (GIS model to identify zones of the railway network at risk of different types of flooding. The GIS model RiskVIP has been constructed through the assessment of three distinct components of risk: “Vulnerability” (assessment of the susceptibility of the railway infrastructure to flood conditions, Intensity’ (capacity of a catchment to generate a flood flow, Probability’ (probability of a rainfall event.Through the application of decision trees, the component ‘Intensity’ has been characterised in the model by the physical properties of the catchment intercepted by the railway line (surface area of the catchment, slope and land cover characteristics and “Vulnerability” by the infrastructure itself (type, geometry and the presence of hydraulic structures. In order to evaluate its efficiency at identifying sites at risk of flooding, the model has been tested in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon in France

  8. Floods of Selected Streams in Arkansas, Spring 2008

    Science.gov (United States)

    Funkhouser, Jaysson E.; Eng, Ken

    2009-01-01

    Floods can cause loss of life and extensive destruction to property. Monitoring floods and understanding the reasons for their occurrence are the responsibility of many Federal agencies. The National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Geological Survey are among the most visible of these agencies. Together, these three agencies collect and analyze floodflow information to better understand the variety of mechanisms that cause floods, and how the characteristics and frequencies of floods vary with time and location. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has monitored and assessed the quantity of streamflow in our Nation's streams since the agency's inception in 1879. Because of ongoing collection and assessment of streamflow data, the USGS can provide information about a range of surface-water issues including the suitability of water for public supply and irrigation and the effects of agriculture and urbanization on streamflow. As part of its streamflow-data collection activities, the USGS measured streamflow in multiple streams during extreme flood events in Arkansas in the spring of 2008. The analysis of streamflow information collected during flood events such as these provides a scientific basis for decision making related to resource management and restoration. Additionally, this information can be used by water-resource managers to better define flood-hazard areas and to design bridges, culverts, dams, levees, and other structures. Water levels (stage) and streamflow (discharge) currently are being monitored in near real-time at approximately 150 locations in Arkansas. The streamflow-gaging stations measure and record hydrologic data at 15-minute or hourly intervals; the data then are transmitted through satellites to the USGS database and displayed on the internet every 1 to 4 hours. Streamflow-gaging stations in Arkansas are part of a network of over 7,500 active streamflow-gaging stations operated by the USGS throughout the United

  9. Lessons Learned from Missing Flooding Barriers Operating Experience

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Simic, Z.; Veira, M. P.

    2016-01-01

    Flooding hazard is highly significant for nuclear power plant safety because of its potential for common cause impact on safety related systems, and because operating experience reviews regularly identify flooding as a cause of concern. Source of the flooding could be external (location) or internal (plant design). The amount of flooding water could vary but even small amount might suffice to affect redundant trains of safety related systems for power supply and cooling. The protection from the flooding is related to the design-basis flood level (DBFL) and it consists of three elements: structural, organizational and accessibility. Determination of the DBFL is critical, as Fukushima Daiichi accident terribly proved. However, as the topic of flooding is very broad, the scope of this paper is focused only on the issues related to the missing flood barriers. Structural measures are physically preventing flooding water to reach or damage safety related system, and they could be permanent or temporary. For temporary measures it is important to have necessary material, equipment and organizational capacity for the timely implementation. Maintenance is important for permanent protection and periodical review is important for assuring readiness and feasibility of temporary flooding protection. Final flooding protection element is assured accessibility to safety related systems during the flooding. Appropriate flooding protection is based on the right implementation of design requirements, proper maintenance and periodic reviews. Operating experience is constantly proving how numerous water sources and systems interactions make flooding protection challenging. This paper is presenting recent related operating experience feedback involving equipment, procedures and analysis. Most frequent deficiencies are: inadequate, degraded or missing seals that would allow floodwaters into safety related spaces. Procedures are inadequate typically because they underestimate necessary

  10. Impact of a flood disaster on sediment toxicity in a major river system - the Elbe flood 2002 as a case study

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Oetken, Matthias; Stachel, Burkhard; Pfenninger, Markus; Oehlmann, Joerg

    2005-01-01

    The ecotoxicological implications of a flooding disaster were investigated with the exceptional Elbe flood in August 2002 as an example. Sediment samples were taken shortly after the flood at 37 sites. For toxicity assessment the midge Chironomus riparius (Insecta) and the mudsnail Potamopyrgus antipodarum (Gastropoda) were exposed to the sediment samples for 28 days. For a subset of 19 sampling sites, the contamination level and the biological response of both species were also recorded before the flood in 2000. The direct comparison of biological responses at identical sites revealed significant differences for samples taken before and immediately after the flood. After flood sediments of the river Elbe caused both higher emergence rates in the midge and higher numbers of embryos in the mudsnail. Contrary to expectations the toxicity of the sediments decreased after the flood, probably because of a dilution of toxic substances along the river Elbe and a reduction in bioavailability of pollutants as a result of increasing TOC values after the flood. - The extraordinary Elbe flood in August 2002 did not result in an overall increase of environmental contamination

  11. How useful are Swiss flood insurance data for flood vulnerability assessments?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Röthlisberger, Veronika; Bernet, Daniel; Zischg, Andreas; Keiler, Margreth

    2015-04-01

    The databases of Swiss flood insurance companies build a valuable but to date rarely used source of information on physical flood vulnerability. Detailed insights into the Swiss flood insurance system are crucial for using the full potential of the different databases for research on flood vulnerability. Insurance against floods in Switzerland is a federal system, the modalities are manly regulated on cantonal level. However there are some common principles that apply throughout Switzerland. First of all coverage against floods (and other particular natural hazards) is an integral part of every fire insurance policy for buildings or contents. This coupling of insurance as well as the statutory obligation to insure buildings in most of the cantons and movables in some of the cantons lead to a very high penetration. Second, in case of damage, the reinstatement costs (value as new) are compensated and third there are no (or little) deductible and co-pay. High penetration and the fact that the compensations represent a large share of the direct, tangible losses of the individual policy holders make the databases of the flood insurance companies a comprehensive and therefore valuable data source for flood vulnerability research. Insurance companies not only store electronically data about losses (typically date, amount of claims payment, cause of damage, identity of the insured object or policyholder) but also about insured objects. For insured objects the (insured) value and the details on the policy and its holder are the main feature to record. On buildings the insurance companies usually computerize additional information such as location, volume, year of construction or purpose of use. For the 19 (of total 26) cantons with a cantonal monopoly insurer the data of these insurance establishments have the additional value to represent (almost) the entire building stock of the respective canton. Spatial referenced insurance data can be used for many aspects of

  12. Long-term changes in community assembly, resistance, and resilience following experimental floods.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Robinson, Christopher T

    2012-10-01

    This study examined the long-term changes in community assembly, resistance, and resilience of macroinvertebrates following 10 years of experimental floods in a flow regulated river. Physico-chemistry, macroinvertebrates, and periphyton biomass were monitored before and sequentially after each of 22 floods, and drift/seston was collected during six separate floods over the study period. The floods reduced the density and taxon richness of macroinvertebrates, and a nonmetric dimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis distinguished temporal shifts in community assembly. Resistance (measured as the relative lack of loss in density) tofloods varied among taxa, and the abundance of resistant taxa was related to the temporal changes in community assembly. Community resistance was inversely related to flood magnitude with all larger floods (> 25 m3/s, > 16-fold over baseflow) reducing densities by > 75% regardless of flood year, whereas smaller floods (floods. No relationship was found between flood magnitude and the relative loss in periphyton biomass. Resilience was defined as the recovery slope (positive slope of a parameter with time following each flood) and was unrelated to shifts in community assembly or resistance. Macroinvertebrate drift and seston demonstrated hysteresis (i.e., a temporal response in parameter quantity with change in discharge) during each flood, although larger floods typically had two peaks in both parameters. The first peak was a response to the initial increases in flow, whereas the second peak was associated with streambed disturbance (substrate mobility) and side-slope failure causing increased scour. Drift density was 3-9 times greater and that of seston 3-30 times greater during larger floods than smaller floods. These results demonstrate temporal shifts in macroinvertebrate community assembly toward a pre-dam assemblage following sequential floods in this flow regulated river, thus confirming the ecological role of habitat filtering in

  13. Evaluation of Satellite Rainfall Estimates for Drought and Flood Monitoring in Mozambique

    OpenAIRE

    Carolien Toté; Domingos Patricio; Hendrik Boogaard; Raymond van der Wijngaart; Elena Tarnavsky; Chris Funk

    2015-01-01

    Satellite derived rainfall products are useful for drought and flood early warning and overcome the problem of sparse, unevenly distributed and erratic rain gauge observations, provided their accuracy is well known. Mozambique is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as major droughts and floods and thus, an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different rainfall products is valuable. Three dekadal (10-day) gridded satellite rainfall products (TAMSAT African Rainfall Cl...

  14. FloodProBE: technologies for improved safety of the built environment in relation to flood events

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ree, C.C.D.F. van; Van, M.A.; Heilemann, K.; Morris, M.W.; Royet, P.; Zevenbergen, C.

    2011-01-01

    The FloodProBE project started as a FP7 research project in November 2009. Floods, together with wind related storms, are considered the major natural hazard in the EU in terms of risk to people and assets. In order to adapt urban areas (in river and coastal zones) to prevent flooding or to be better prepared for floods, decision makers need to determine how to upgrade flood defences and increasing flood resilience of protected buildings and critical infrastructure (power supplies, communications, water, transport, etc.) and assess the expected risk reduction from these measures. The aim of the FloodProBE-project is to improve knowledge on flood resilience and flood protection performance for balancing investments in flood risk management in urban areas. To this end, technologies, methods and tools for assessment purposes and for the adaptation of new and existing buildings and critical infrastructure are developed, tested and disseminated. Three priority areas are addressed by FloodProBE. These are: (i) vulnerability of critical infrastructure and high-density value assets including direct and indirect damage, (ii) the assessment and reliability of urban flood defences including the use of geophysical methods and remote sensing techniques and (iii) concepts and technologies for upgrading weak links in flood defences as well as construction technologies for flood proofing buildings and infrastructure networks to increase the flood resilience of the urban system. The primary impact of FloodProBE in advancing knowledge in these areas is an increase in the cost-effectiveness (i.e. performance) of new and existing flood protection structures and flood resilience measures.

  15. Evaluation of Satellite Rainfall Estimates for Drought and Flood Monitoring in Mozambique

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carolien Toté

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available Satellite derived rainfall products are useful for drought and flood early warning and overcome the problem of sparse, unevenly distributed and erratic rain gauge observations, provided their accuracy is well known. Mozambique is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as major droughts and floods and thus, an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different rainfall products is valuable. Three dekadal (10-day gridded satellite rainfall products (TAMSAT African Rainfall Climatology And Time-series (TARCAT v2.0, Famine Early Warning System NETwork (FEWS NET Rainfall Estimate (RFE v2.0, and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS are compared to independent gauge data (2001–2012. This is done using pairwise comparison statistics to evaluate the performance in estimating rainfall amounts and categorical statistics to assess rain-detection capabilities. The analysis was performed for different rainfall categories, over the seasonal cycle and for regions dominated by different weather systems. Overall, satellite products overestimate low and underestimate high dekadal rainfall values. The RFE and CHIRPS products perform as good, generally outperforming TARCAT on the majority of statistical measures of skill. TARCAT detects best the relative frequency of rainfall events, while RFE underestimates and CHIRPS overestimates the rainfall events frequency. Differences in products performance disappear with higher rainfall and all products achieve better results during the wet season. During the cyclone season, CHIRPS shows the best results, while RFE outperforms the other products for lower dekadal rainfall. Products blending thermal infrared and passive microwave imagery perform better than infrared only products and particularly when meteorological patterns are more complex, such as over the coastal, central and south regions of Mozambique, where precipitation is influenced by frontal systems.

  16. Evaluation of satellite rainfall estimates for drought and flood monitoring in Mozambique

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tote, Carolien; Patricio, Domingos; Boogaard, Hendrik; van der Wijngaart, Raymond; Tarnavsky, Elena; Funk, Christopher C.

    2015-01-01

    Satellite derived rainfall products are useful for drought and flood early warning and overcome the problem of sparse, unevenly distributed and erratic rain gauge observations, provided their accuracy is well known. Mozambique is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as major droughts and floods and thus, an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different rainfall products is valuable. Three dekadal (10-day) gridded satellite rainfall products (TAMSAT African Rainfall Climatology And Time-series (TARCAT) v2.0, Famine Early Warning System NETwork (FEWS NET) Rainfall Estimate (RFE) v2.0, and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS)) are compared to independent gauge data (2001–2012). This is done using pairwise comparison statistics to evaluate the performance in estimating rainfall amounts and categorical statistics to assess rain-detection capabilities. The analysis was performed for different rainfall categories, over the seasonal cycle and for regions dominated by different weather systems. Overall, satellite products overestimate low and underestimate high dekadal rainfall values. The RFE and CHIRPS products perform as good, generally outperforming TARCAT on the majority of statistical measures of skill. TARCAT detects best the relative frequency of rainfall events, while RFE underestimates and CHIRPS overestimates the rainfall events frequency. Differences in products performance disappear with higher rainfall and all products achieve better results during the wet season. During the cyclone season, CHIRPS shows the best results, while RFE outperforms the other products for lower dekadal rainfall. Products blending thermal infrared and passive microwave imagery perform better than infrared only products and particularly when meteorological patterns are more complex, such as over the coastal, central and south regions of Mozambique, where precipitation is influenced by frontal systems.

  17. Life and Death of a Flood Basalt: Evolution of a Magma Plumbing System in the Ethiopian Low-Ti Flood Basalt Province

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krans, S. R.; Rooney, T. O.; Kappelman, J. W.; Yirgu, G.; Ayalew, D.

    2017-12-01

    Continental flood basalt provinces (CFBPs), which are thought to preserve the magmatic record of an impinging mantle plume head, offer spatial and temporal insight into melt generation processes in Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs). Despite the utility of CFBPs in probing the composition of mantle plumes, these basalts typically erupt fractionated compositions, suggestive of significant residence time in the continental lithosphere. The location and duration of this residence within the continental lithosphere provides additional insights into the flux of plume-related magmas. The NW Ethiopian plateau offers a well preserved stratigraphic section from flood basalt initiation to termination, and is thus an important target for study of CFBPs. We examine petrographic and whole rock geochemical variation within a stratigraphic framework and place these observations within the context of the magmatic evolution of the Ethiopian CFBP. We observe multiple pulses of magma recharge punctuated by brief shut-down events and an overall shallowing of the magmatic plumbing system over time. Initial flows are fed by magmas that have experienced deeper fractionation (clinopyroxene dominated and lower CaO/Al2O3 for a given MgO value), likely near the crust-mantle boundary. Subsequent flows are fed by magmas that have experienced shallower fractionation (plagioclase dominated and higher CaO/Al2O3 for a given MgO value) in addition to deeper fractionated magmas. Broad changes in flow thickness and modal mineralogy are consistent with fluctuating changes in magmatic flux through a complex plumbing system and indicate pulsed magma flux and an overall shallowing of the magmatic plumbing system over time. Pulses of less differentiated magmas (MgO > 8 wt%) and high-An composition of plagioclase megacrysts (labradorite to bytownite) suggest a constant replenishing of new primitive magma recharging the shallow plumbing system during the main phase of flood volcanism, though the magnitude of

  18. Flooding in counter-current two-phase flow

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ragland, W.A.; Ganic, E.N.

    1982-01-01

    Flooding is a phenomenon which is best described as the transition from counter-current to co-current flow. Early notice was taken of this phenomenon in the chemical engineering industry. Flooding also plays an important role in the field of two-phase heat transfer since it is a limit for many systems involving counter-current flow. Practical applications of flooding limited processes include wickless thermosyphons and the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) of pressurized water nuclear reactors. The phenomenon of flooding also is involved in the behavior of nuclear reactor core materials during severe accident conditions where flooding is one of the mechanisms governing the motion of the molten fuel pin cladding

  19. Flooding in counter-current two-phase flow

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ragland, W.A.; Ganic, E.N.

    1982-01-01

    Flooding is a phenomenon which is best described as the transition from counter-current to co-current flow. Early notice was taken of this phenomenon in the chemical engineering industry. Flooding also plays an important role in the field of two-phase heat transfer since it is a limit for many systems involving counter-current flow. Practical applications of flooding limited processes include wickless thermosyphons and the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) of pressurized water nuclear reactors. The phenomenon of flooding also is involved in the behavior of nuclear reactor core materials during severe accident conditions where flooding is one of the mechanisms governing the motion of the molten fuel pin cladding.

  20. A system for generating long streamflow records for study of floods of long return period: Phase 2

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Franz, D.D.; Kraeger, B.A.; Linsley, R.K.

    1989-02-01

    Knowledge of the return periods of large floods is required to make risk analyses for nuclear power plants subject to flooding from rivers. The system reported here combined the stochastic simulation of hourly rainfall data and daily pan evaporation data with the deterministic simulation of streamflow by using the synthetic rainfall and evaporation data as input to a calibrated rainfall runoff model. The sequence of annual maximum flood peaks from a synthetic record of 10,000 years or more was then analyzed to obtain estimates of flood frequency. The reasonableness of the flood frequency results must be evaluated on the degree of mimicry of the key characteristics of the observed rainfall data and the ability of the rainfall-runoff model to mimic the observed flood frequency during the calibration period. On this basis, the flood frequency results appeared to be a reasonable extrapolation of the data used in defining the model parameters. There is a need to develop regional parameters for the stochastic models and to conduct research on the relationship between the stochastic structure of rainfall and stochastic structure of flood frequency. The methodology is applicable, assuming a highly skilled analyst, to watersheds similar to those already tested

  1. Hydrological information system based on on-line monitoring--from strategy to implementation in the Brantas River Basin, East Java, Indonesia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marini, G W; Wellguni, H

    2003-01-01

    The worsening environmental situation of the Brantas River, East Java, is addressed by a comprehensive basin management strategy which relies on accurate water quantity and quality data retrieved from a newly installed online monitoring network. Integrated into a Hydrological Information System, the continuously measured indicative parameters allow early warning, control and polluter identification. Additionally, long-term analyses have been initiated for improving modelling applications like flood forecasting, water resource management and pollutant propagation. Preliminary results illustrate the efficiency of the installed system.

  2. The use of a flood index to characterise flooding in the north-eastern region of Bangladesh

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bhattacharya B.

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Flooding in the Haor region in the north-east of Bangladesh is presented in this paper. A haor is a saucershaped depression, which is used during the dry period (Dec to mid-May for agriculture and as a fishery during the wet period (Jun-Nov. Pre-monsoon flooding till mid-May causes agricultural loss. The area is bordering India, and is fed by some flashy Indian catchments. The area is drained mainly by the Surma-Kushiyara river system. The terrain generally is flat and the flashy characteristics die out within a short distance from the border. Limited studies on the region, particularly with the help of numerical models, have been carried out in the past. Therefore, an objective of the current research was to set up numerical models capable of reasonably emulating the physical system. Such models could, for example, associate different gauges to the spatio-temporal variation of hydrodynamic variables and help in carrying out a systemic study on the flood propagation. A 1D2D model, with one-dimensional model for the rivers (based on MIKE 11 from DHI and a two-dimensional model for the haors (based on MIKE 21 from DHI were developed. In order to characterize flooding in the large area a flood index is proposed, which is computed based on the hydrograph characteristics such as the rising curve gradient, flood magnitude ratio and time to peak. The index was used in characterising flooding in the Haor region. In general, two groups of rivers were identified. The study enabled identifying the hot-spots in the study area with risks from flooding.

  3. Monitoring Cray Cooling Systems

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Maxwell, Don E [ORNL; Ezell, Matthew A [ORNL; Becklehimer, Jeff [Cray, Inc.; Donovan, Matthew J [ORNL; Layton, Christopher C [ORNL

    2014-01-01

    While sites generally have systems in place to monitor the health of Cray computers themselves, often the cooling systems are ignored until a computer failure requires investigation into the source of the failure. The Liebert XDP units used to cool the Cray XE/XK models as well as the Cray proprietary cooling system used for the Cray XC30 models provide data useful for health monitoring. Unfortunately, this valuable information is often available only to custom solutions not accessible by a center-wide monitoring system or is simply ignored entirely. In this paper, methods and tools used to harvest the monitoring data available are discussed, and the implementation needed to integrate the data into a center-wide monitoring system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is provided.

  4. Measuring flood footprint of a regional economy - A case study for the UK flooding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guan, D.

    2013-12-01

    Analysis of the urban economy and society is central to understanding the broad impacts of flooding and to identify cost-effective adaptation and mitigation measures. Assessments of the flooding impacts on cities have traditionally focused on the initial impact on people and assets. These initial estimates (so-called ';direct damage') are useful both in understanding the immediate implications of damage, and in marshalling the pools of capital and supplies required for re-building after an event. Since different economies as well as societies are coupled, especially under the current economic crisis, any small-scale damage may be multiplied and cascaded throughout wider economic systems and social networks. The direct and indirect damage is currently not evaluated well and could be captured by quantification of what we call the flood footprint. Flooding in one location can impact the whole UK economy. Neglecting these knock-on costs (i.e. the true footprint of the flood) means we might be ignoring the economic benefits and beneficiaries of flood risk management interventions. In 2007, for example, floods cost the economy about £3.2 bn directly, but the wider effect might actually add another 50% to 250% to that. Flood footprint is a measure of the exclusive total socioeconomic impact that is directly and indirectly caused by a flood event to the flooding region and wider economic systems and social networks. We adopt the UK 2012 flooding. An input-output basic dynamic inequalities (BDI) model is used to assess the impact of the floodings on the level of a Yorkshire economy, accounting for interactions between industries through demand and supply of intermediate consumption goods with a circular flow. After the disaster the economy will be unbalanced. The recovery process finishes when the economy is completely balance, i.e., when labour production capacity equals demands and production and all the variables reach pre-disaster levels. The analysis is carried out

  5. Flood Hazards: Communicating Hydrology and Complexity to the Public

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holmes, R. R.; Blanchard, S. F.; Mason, R. R.

    2010-12-01

    Floods have a major impact on society and the environment. Since 1952, approximately 1,233 of 1,931 (64%) Federal disaster declarations were due directly to flooding, with an additional 297 due to hurricanes which had associated flooding. Although the overall average annual number of deaths due to flooding has decreased in the United States, the average annual flood damage is rising. According to the Munich Reinsurance Company in their publication “Schadenspiegel 3/2005”, during 1990s the world experienced as much as $500 billion in economic losses due to floods, highlighting the serious need for continued emphasis on flood-loss prevention measures. Flood-loss prevention has two major elements: mitigation (including structural flood-control measures and land-use planning and regulation) and risk awareness. Of the two, increasing risk awareness likely offers the most potential for protecting lives over the near-term and long-term sustainability in the coming years. Flood-risk awareness and risk-aware behavior is dependent on communication, involving both prescriptive and educational measures. Prescriptive measures (for example, flood warnings and stormwater ordinances) are and have been effective, but there is room for improvement. New communications technologies, particularly social media utilizing mobile, smart phones and text devices, for example, could play a significant role in increasing public awareness of long-term risk and near-term flood conditions. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), for example, the Federal agency that monitors the Nation’s rivers, recently released a new service that can better connect the to the public to information about flood hazards. The new service, WaterAlert (URL: http://water.usgs.gov/wateralert/), allows users to set flood notification thresholds of their own choosing for any USGS real-time streamgage. The system then sends emails or text messages to subscribers whenever the threshold conditions are met, as often as the

  6. Improving Flood Prediction By the Assimilation of Satellite Soil Moisture in Poorly Monitored Catchments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alvarez-Garreton, C. D.; Ryu, D.; Western, A. W.; Crow, W. T.; Su, C. H.; Robertson, D. E.

    2014-12-01

    Flood prediction in poorly monitored catchments is among the greatest challenges faced by hydrologists. To address this challenge, an increasing number of studies in the last decade have explored methods to integrate various existing observations from ground and satellites. One approach in particular, is the assimilation of satellite soil moisture (SM-DA) into rainfall-runoff models. The rationale is that satellite soil moisture (SSM) can be used to correct model soil water states, enabling more accurate prediction of catchment response to precipitation and thus better streamflow. However, there is still no consensus on the most effective SM-DA scheme and how this might depend on catchment scale, climate characteristics, runoff mechanisms, model and SSM products used, etc. In this work, an operational SM-DA scheme was set up in the poorly monitored, large (>40,000 km2), semi-arid Warrego catchment situated in eastern Australia. We assimilated passive and active SSM products into the probability distributed model (PDM) using an ensemble Kalman filter. We explored factors influencing the SM-DA framework, including relatively new techniques to remove model-observation bias, estimate observation errors and represent model errors. Furthermore, we explored the advantages of accounting for the spatial distribution of forcing and channel routing processes within the catchment by implementing and comparing lumped and semi-distributed model setups. Flood prediction is improved by SM-DA (Figure), with a 30% reduction of the average root-mean-squared difference of the ensemble prediction, a 20% reduction of the false alarm ratio and a 40% increase of the ensemble mean Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency. SM-DA skill does not significantly change with different observation error assumptions, but the skill strongly depends on the observational bias correction technique used, and more importantly, on the performance of the open-loop model before assimilation. Our findings imply that proper

  7. A Bayesian Network approach for flash flood risk assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boutkhamouine, Brahim; Roux, Hélène; Pérès, François

    2017-04-01

    Climate change is contributing to the increase of natural disasters such as extreme weather events. Sometimes, these events lead to sudden flash floods causing devastating effects on life and property. Most recently, many regions of the French Mediterranean perimeter have endured such catastrophic flood events; Var (October 2015), Ardèche (November 2014), Nîmes (October 2014), Hérault, Gard and Languedoc (September 2014), and Pyrenees mountains (Jun 2013). Altogether, it resulted in dozens of victims and property damages amounting to millions of euros. With this heavy loss in mind, development of hydrological forecasting and warning systems is becoming an essential element in regional and national strategies. Flash flood forecasting but also monitoring is a difficult task because small ungauged catchments ( 10 km2) are often the most destructive ones as for the extreme flash flood event of September 2002 in the Cévennes region (France) (Ruin et al., 2008). The problem of measurement/prediction uncertainty is particularly crucial when attempting to develop operational flash-flood forecasting methods. Taking into account the uncertainty related to the model structure itself, to the model parametrization or to the model forcing (spatio-temporal rainfall, initial conditions) is crucial in hydrological modelling. Quantifying these uncertainties is of primary importance for risk assessment and decision making. Although significant improvements have been made in computational power and distributed hydrologic modelling, the issue dealing with integration of uncertainties into flood forecasting remains up-to-date and challenging. In order to develop a framework which could handle these uncertainties and explain their propagation through the model, we propose to explore the potential of graphical models (GMs) and, more precisely, Bayesian Networks (BNs). These networks are Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) in which knowledge of a certain phenomenon is represented by

  8. Assessing flood forecast uncertainty with fuzzy arithmetic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    de Bruyn Bertrand

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Providing forecasts for flow rates and water levels during floods have to be associated with uncertainty estimates. The forecast sources of uncertainty are plural. For hydrological forecasts (rainfall-runoff performed using a deterministic hydrological model with basic physics, two main sources can be identified. The first obvious source is the forcing data: rainfall forecast data are supplied in real time by meteorological forecasting services to the Flood Forecasting Service within a range between a lowest and a highest predicted discharge. These two values define an uncertainty interval for the rainfall variable provided on a given watershed. The second source of uncertainty is related to the complexity of the modeled system (the catchment impacted by the hydro-meteorological phenomenon, the number of variables that may describe the problem and their spatial and time variability. The model simplifies the system by reducing the number of variables to a few parameters. Thus it contains an intrinsic uncertainty. This model uncertainty is assessed by comparing simulated and observed rates for a large number of hydro-meteorological events. We propose a method based on fuzzy arithmetic to estimate the possible range of flow rates (and levels of water making a forecast based on possible rainfalls provided by forcing and uncertainty model. The model uncertainty is here expressed as a range of possible values. Both rainfall and model uncertainties are combined with fuzzy arithmetic. This method allows to evaluate the prediction uncertainty range. The Flood Forecasting Service of Oise and Aisne rivers, in particular, monitors the upstream watershed of the Oise at Hirson. This watershed’s area is 310 km2. Its response time is about 10 hours. Several hydrological models are calibrated for flood forecasting in this watershed and use the rainfall forecast. This method presents the advantage to be easily implemented. Moreover, it permits to be carried out

  9. Coastal flood inundation monitoring with Satellite C-band and L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramsey, Elijah W.; Rangoonwala, Amina; Bannister, Terri

    2013-01-01

    Satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) was evaluated as a method to operationally monitor the occurrence and distribution of storm- and tidal-related flooding of spatially extensive coastal marshes within the north-central Gulf of Mexico. Maps representing the occurrence of marsh surface inundation were created from available Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array type L-Band SAR (PALSAR) (L-band) (21 scenes with HH polarizations in Wide Beam [100 m]) data and Environmental Satellite (ENVISAT) Advanced SAR (ASAR) (C-band) data (24 scenes with VV and HH polarizations in Wide Swath [150 m]) during 2006-2009 covering 500 km of the Louisiana coastal zone. Mapping was primarily based on a decrease in backscatter between reference and target scenes, and as an extension of previous studies, the flood inundation mapping performance was assessed by the degree of correspondence between inundation mapping and inland water levels. Both PALSAR- and ASAR-based mapping at times were based on suboptimal reference scenes; however, ASAR performance seemed more sensitive to reference-scene quality and other types of scene variability. Related to water depth, PALSAR and ASAR mapping accuracies tended to be lower when water depths were shallow and increased as water levels decreased below or increased above the ground surface, but this pattern was more pronounced with ASAR. Overall, PALSAR-based inundation accuracies averaged 84% (n = 160), while ASAR-based mapping accuracies averaged 62% (n = 245).

  10. Improving Radar QPE's in Complex Terrain for Improved Flash Flood Monitoring and Prediction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cifelli, R.; Streubel, D. P.; Reynolds, D.

    2010-12-01

    Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) is extremely challenging in regions of complex terrain due to a combination of issues related to sampling. In particular, radar beams are often blocked or scan above the liquid precipitation zone while rain gauge density is often too low to properly characterize the spatial distribution of precipitation. Due to poor radar coverage, rain gauge networks are used by the National Weather Service (NWS) River Forecast Centers as the principal source for QPE across the western U.S. The California Nevada River Forecast Center (CNRFC) uses point rainfall measurements and historical rainfall runoff relationships to derive river stage forecasts. The point measurements are interpolated to a 4 km grid using Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) data to develop a gridded 6-hour QPE product (hereafter referred to as RFC QPE). Local forecast offices can utilize the Multi-sensor Precipitation Estimator (MPE) software to improve local QPE’s and thus local flash flood monitoring and prediction. MPE uses radar and rain gauge data to develop a combined QPE product at 1-hour intervals. The rain gauge information is used to bias correct the radar precipitation estimates so that, in situations where the rain gauge density and radar coverage are adequate, MPE can take advantage of the spatial coverage of the radar and the “ground truth” of the rain gauges to provide an accurate QPE. The MPE 1-hour QPE analysis should provide better spatial and temporal resolution for short duration hydrologic events as compared to 6-hour analyses. These hourly QPEs are then used to correct radar derived rain rates used by the Flash Flood Monitoring and Prediction (FFMP) software in forecast offices for issuance of flash flood warnings. Although widely used by forecasters across the eastern U.S., MPE is not used extensively by the NWS in the west. Part of the reason for the lack of use of MPE across the west is that there has

  11. Assessing infrastructure vulnerability to major floods

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Jenssen, Lars

    1998-12-31

    This thesis proposes a method for assessing the direct effects of serious floods on a physical infrastructure or utility. This method should be useful in contingency planning and in the design of structures likely to be damaged by flooding. A review is given of (1) methods of floodplain management and strategies for mitigating floods, (2) methods of risk analysis that will become increasingly important in flood management, (3) methods for hydraulic computations, (4) a variety of scour assessment methods and (5) applications of geographic information systems (GIS) to the analysis of flood vulnerability. Three computer codes were developed: CULVCAP computes the headwater level for circular and box culverts, SCOUR for assessing riprap stability and scour depths, and FASTFLOOD prepares input rainfall series and input files for the rainfall-runoff model used in the case study. A road system in central Norway was chosen to study how to analyse the flood vulnerability of an infrastructure. Finally, the thesis proposes a method for analysing the flood vulnerability of physical infrastructure. The method involves a general stage that will provide data on which parts of the infrastructure are potentially vulnerable to flooding and how to analyse them, and a specific stage which is concerned with analysing one particular kind of physical infrastructure in a study area. 123 refs., 59 figs., 17 tabs= .

  12. Application of the "Behind the Barriers" resilience conceptual model to a flooded rail transport system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gonzva, Michael; Barroca, Bruno

    2017-04-01

    The vulnerability of guided transport systems facing natural hazards is a burning issue for the urban risks management. Experience feedbacks on guided transport systems show they are particularly vulnerable to natural risks, especially flood risks. Besides, the resilience concept is used as a systemic approach for making an accurate analysis of the effect of these natural risks on rail guided transport systems. In this context, several conceptual models of resilience are elaborated for presenting the various possible resilience strategies applied to urban technical systems. One of this resilience conceptual model is the so-called "Behind The Barriers" model based on the identification of four complementary types of resilience: (i) cognitive resilience, linked to knowledge of the risk and the potential failures; (ii) functional resilience, representing the capacity of a system to protect itself from damage while continuing to provide services; (iii) correlative resilience, that characterises the relationship between service demand and the capacity of the system to respond; (iv) organisational resilience, expressing the capacity to mobilise an area much wider than the one affected. In addition to the work already published during the 7th Resilience Engineering Symposium, the purpose of this paper is to offer an application of a resilience conceptual model, the "Behind the Barriers" model, relating to a specific urban technical system, the public guided transport system, and facing a particular risk, a flood hazard. To do that, the paper is focused on a past incident on a French Intercity railway line as a studied case. Indeed, on June 18th and 19th 2013, the rise of the level of the "Gave de Pau" river, located in the municipality of Coarraze, caused many disorders on the intercity line serving the cities of Tarbes, Pau and Lourdes . Among the disorders caused by the flooding, about 100 meters of railway embankments were collapsed. With a constraint to reopen the

  13. Flood hazard assessment in areas prone to flash flooding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kvočka, Davor; Falconer, Roger A.; Bray, Michaela

    2016-04-01

    Contemporary climate projections suggest that there will be an increase in the occurrence of high-intensity rainfall events in the future. These precipitation extremes are usually the main cause for the emergence of extreme flooding, such as flash flooding. Flash floods are among the most unpredictable, violent and fatal natural hazards in the world. Furthermore, it is expected that flash flooding will occur even more frequently in the future due to more frequent development of extreme weather events, which will greatly increase the danger to people caused by flash flooding. This being the case, there will be a need for high resolution flood hazard maps in areas susceptible to flash flooding. This study investigates what type of flood hazard assessment methods should be used for assessing the flood hazard to people caused by flash flooding. Two different types of flood hazard assessment methods were tested: (i) a widely used method based on an empirical analysis, and (ii) a new, physically based and experimentally calibrated method. Two flash flood events were considered herein, namely: the 2004 Boscastle flash flood and the 2007 Železniki flash flood. The results obtained in this study suggest that in the areas susceptible to extreme flooding, the flood hazard assessment should be conducted using methods based on a mechanics-based analysis. In comparison to standard flood hazard assessment methods, these physically based methods: (i) take into account all of the physical forces, which act on a human body in floodwater, (ii) successfully adapt to abrupt changes in the flow regime, which often occur for flash flood events, and (iii) rapidly assess a flood hazard index in a relatively short period of time.

  14. A methodology for urban flood resilience assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lhomme, Serge; Serre, Damien; Diab, Youssef; Laganier, Richard

    2010-05-01

    In Europe, river floods have been increasing in frequency and severity [Szöllösi-Nagy and Zevenbergen, 2005]. Moreover, climate change is expected to exacerbate the frequency and intensity of hydro meteorological disaster [IPCC, 2007]. Despite efforts made to maintain the flood defense assets, we often observe levee failures leading to finally increase flood risk in protected area. Furthermore, flood forecasting models, although benefiting continuous improvements, remain partly inaccurate due to uncertainties arising all along data calculation processes. In the same time, the year 2007 marks a turning point in history: half of the world population now lives in cities (UN-Habitat, 2007). Moreover, the total urban population is expected to double from two to four billion over the next 30 to 35 years (United Nations, 2006). This growing rate is equivalent to the creation of a new city of one million inhabitants every week, and this during the next four decades [Flood resilience Group]. So, this quick urban development coupled with technical failures and climate change have increased flood risk and corresponding challenges to urban flood risk management [Ashley et al., 2007], [Nie et al., 2009]. These circumstances oblige to manage flood risk by integrating new concepts like urban resilience. In recent years, resilience has become a central concept for risk management. This concept has emerged because a more resilient system is less vulnerable to risk and, therefore, more sustainable [Serre et al., 2010]. But urban flood resilience is a concept that has not yet been directly assessed. Therefore, when decision makers decide to use the resilience concept to manage urban flood, they have no tool to help them. That is why this paper proposes a methodology to assess urban flood resilience in order to make this concept operational. Networks affect the well-being of the people and the smooth functioning of services and, more generally, of economical activities. Yet

  15. Bayesian flood forecasting methods: A review

    Science.gov (United States)

    Han, Shasha; Coulibaly, Paulin

    2017-08-01

    Over the past few decades, floods have been seen as one of the most common and largely distributed natural disasters in the world. If floods could be accurately forecasted in advance, then their negative impacts could be greatly minimized. It is widely recognized that quantification and reduction of uncertainty associated with the hydrologic forecast is of great importance for flood estimation and rational decision making. Bayesian forecasting system (BFS) offers an ideal theoretic framework for uncertainty quantification that can be developed for probabilistic flood forecasting via any deterministic hydrologic model. It provides suitable theoretical structure, empirically validated models and reasonable analytic-numerical computation method, and can be developed into various Bayesian forecasting approaches. This paper presents a comprehensive review on Bayesian forecasting approaches applied in flood forecasting from 1999 till now. The review starts with an overview of fundamentals of BFS and recent advances in BFS, followed with BFS application in river stage forecasting and real-time flood forecasting, then move to a critical analysis by evaluating advantages and limitations of Bayesian forecasting methods and other predictive uncertainty assessment approaches in flood forecasting, and finally discusses the future research direction in Bayesian flood forecasting. Results show that the Bayesian flood forecasting approach is an effective and advanced way for flood estimation, it considers all sources of uncertainties and produces a predictive distribution of the river stage, river discharge or runoff, thus gives more accurate and reliable flood forecasts. Some emerging Bayesian forecasting methods (e.g. ensemble Bayesian forecasting system, Bayesian multi-model combination) were shown to overcome limitations of single model or fixed model weight and effectively reduce predictive uncertainty. In recent years, various Bayesian flood forecasting approaches have been

  16. Evaluating penetration-monitoring systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Markin, J.T.

    1981-01-01

    Evaluating the performance of a process monitoring system in detecting improper activities that could be related to material diversion requires a framework for addressing the complexity and statistical uncertainty of such systems. This report proposes a methodology that determines the optimal divertor strategy against a monitoring system and the system probability of detection. This method extends previous work by correctly modeling uncorrelated and correlated measurement errors for radiation monitors

  17. Development of a spatial decision support system for flood risk management in Brazil that combines volunteered geographic information with wireless sensor networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Horita, Flávio E. A.; Albuquerque, João Porto de; Degrossi, Lívia C.; Mendiondo, Eduardo M.; Ueyama, Jó

    2015-07-01

    Effective flood risk management requires updated information to ensure that the correct decisions can be made. This can be provided by Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which are a low-cost means of collecting updated information about rivers. Another valuable resource is Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) which is a comparatively new means of improving the coverage of monitored areas because it is able to supply supplementary information to the WSN and thus support decision-making in flood risk management. However, there still remains the problem of how to combine WSN data with VGI. In this paper, an attempt is made to investigate AGORA-DS, which is a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) that is able to make flood risk management more effective by combining these data sources, i.e. WSN with VGI. This approach is built over a conceptual model that complies with the interoperable standards laid down by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) - e.g. Sensor Observation Service (SOS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) - and seeks to combine and present unified information in a web-based decision support tool. This work was deployed in a real scenario of flood risk management in the town of São Carlos in Brazil. The evidence obtained from this deployment confirmed that interoperable standards can support the integration of data from distinct data sources. In addition, they also show that VGI is able to provide information about areas of the river basin which lack data since there is no appropriate station in the area. Hence it provides a valuable support for the WSN data. It can thus be concluded that AGORA-DS is able to combine information provided by WSN and VGI, and provide useful information for supporting flood risk management.

  18. Linking Science of Flood Forecasts to Humanitarian Actions for Improved Preparedness and Effective Response

    Science.gov (United States)

    Uprety, M.; Dugar, S.; Gautam, D.; Kanel, D.; Kshetri, M.; Kharbuja, R. G.; Acharya, S. H.

    2017-12-01

    Advances in flood forecasting have provided opportunities for humanitarian responders to employ a range of preparedness activities at different forecast time horizons. Yet, the science of prediction is less understood and realized across the humanitarian landscape, and often preparedness plans are based upon average level of flood risk. Working under the remit of Forecast Based Financing (FbF), we present a pilot from Nepal on how available flood and weather forecast products are informing specific pre-emptive actions in the local preparedness and response plans, thereby supporting government stakeholders and humanitarian agencies to take early actions before an impending flood event. In Nepal, forecasting capabilities are limited but in a state of positive flux. Whilst local flood forecasts based upon rainfall-runoff models are yet to be operationalized, streamflow predictions from Global Flood Awareness System (GLoFAS) can be utilized to plan and implement preparedness activities several days in advance. Likewise, 3-day rainfall forecasts from Nepal Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) can further inform specific set of early actions for potential flash floods due to heavy precipitation. Existing community based early warning systems in the major river basins of Nepal are utilizing real time monitoring of water levels and rainfall together with localised probabilistic flood forecasts which has increased warning lead time from 2-3 hours to 7-8 hours. Based on these available forecast products, thresholds and trigger levels have been determined for different flood scenarios. Matching these trigger levels and assigning responsibilities to relevant actors for early actions, a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) are being developed, broadly covering general preparedness activities and science informed anticipatory actions for different forecast lead times followed by the immediate response activities. These SOPs are currently being rolled out and

  19. A Modernized System for Agricultural Monitoring for Food Security in Tanzania

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dempewolf, J.; Nakalembe, C. L.; Becker-Reshef, I.; Justice, C. J.; Tumbo, S.; Mbilinyi, B.; Maurice, S.; Mtalo, M.

    2016-12-01

    Accurate and timely information on agriculture, particularly in many countries dominated by complex smallholder, subsistence agricultural systems is often difficult to obtain or not available. This includes up-to-date information during the growing season on crop type, crop area and crop condition such as developmental stage, damage from pests and diseases, drought or flooding. These data are critical for government decision making on production forecasts, planning for commodity market transactions, food aid delivery, responding to disease outbreaks and for implementing agricultural extension and development efforts. In Tanzania we have been working closely with the National Food Security Division (NFSD) at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MALF) on designing and implementing an advanced agricultural monitoring system, utilizing satellite remote sensing, smart phone and internet technologies. Together with our local implementing partner, the Sokoine University of Agriculture we trained a large number of agricultural extension agents in different regions of Tanzania to deliver field data in near-realtime. Using our collaborative internet portal (Crop Monitor) the team of analysts compiles pertinent information on current crop and weather conditions from throughout the country in a standardized, consistent manner. Using the portal traditionally collected data are combined with electronically collected field data and MODIS satellite image time series from GLAM East-Africa (Global Agricultural Monitoring System, customized for stakeholders in East Africa). The main outcome of this work has been the compilation of the National Food Security Bulletin for Tanzania with plans for a public release and the intention for it to become the main avenue to dispense current updates and analysis on agriculture in the country. The same information is also a potential contribution to the international Early Warning Crop Monitor, which currently covers Tanzania

  20. Flood risk on the Black sea coast of Russia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alekseevsky, Nikolay; Magritsky, Dmitry; Koltermann, Peter; Krylenko, Inna; Umina, Natalya; Aybulatov, Denis; Efremova, Natalya; Lebedeva, Seraphima

    2013-04-01

    coast is very high. It is proved by recent events in 1991, 2002, 2010 and 2012. Possibly, it will increase in the future, as well as number of high and destructive floods. This tendency is caused by strengthening of climatic and synoptic instability in the region and by the human activity in the watersheds and floodplains development (for example huge constructions for the Olympic Winter Games 2014 near Sochi). But this tendency statistically isn't significant yet. Decrease of flood risks will be promoted by optimization of system of hydrometeorological monitoring; detailed studying of factors and characteristics of the floods, including flood dynamic modeling and hazard zonation; development of effective methods of the forecast and the prevention of floods; increasing in channel capacity; population resettlement from especially dangerous areas. The scientific basis for these measures is created by authors within large-scale researches on a grant of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 11.G34.31.0007.

  1. Environmental radiation monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kato, Tsutomu; Shioiri, Masatoshi; Sakamaki, Tsuyoshi

    2007-01-01

    Environmental radiation monitoring systems are used to measure and monitoring gamma-rays at the observation boundaries of nuclear facilities and in the surrounding areas. In recent years, however, few new nuclear facilities have been constructed and the monitoring systems shift to renewal of existing systems. In addition, in order to increase public acceptance, the facilities are being equipped with communication lines to provide data to prefectural environmental centers. In this text, we introduce the latest technology incorporated in replacement of environmental radiation monitoring systems. We also introduce a replacement method that can shorten the duration during which environmental dose rate measurement is interrupted by enabling both the replacement system and the system being replaced to perform measurements in parallel immediately before and after the replacement. (author)

  2. The August 2002 flood in Salzburg / Austria experience gained and lessons learned from the ``Flood of the century''?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wiesenegger, H.

    2003-04-01

    On the {12th} of August 2002 a low pressure system moved slowly from northern Italy towards Slovakia. It continuously carried moist air from the Mediterranean towards the northern rim of the Alps with the effect of wide-spread heavy rainfall in Salzburg and other parts of Austria. Daily precipitation amounts of 100 - 160 mm, in some parts even more, as well as rainfall intensities of 5 - 10 mm/h , combined with well saturated soils lead to a rare flood with a return period of 100 years and more. This rare hydrological event not only caused a national catastrophe with damages of several Billion Euro, but also endangered more than 200,000 people, and even killed some. As floods are dangerous, life-threatening, destructive, and certainly amongst the most frequent and costly natural disasters in terms of human hardship as well as economic loss, a great effort, therefore, has to be made to protect people against negative impacts of floods. In order to achieve this objective, various regulations in land use planning (flood maps), constructive measurements (river regulations and technical constructions) as well as flood warning systems, which are not suitable to prevent big floods, but offer in-time-warnings to minimize the loss of human lives, are used in Austria. HYDRIS (Hydrological Information System for flood forecasting in Salzburg), a modular river basin model, developed at Technical University Vienna and operated by the Hydrological Service of Salzburg, was used during the August 2002 flood providing accurate 3 to 4 hour forecasts within 3 % of the real peak discharge of the fast flowing River Salzach. The August {12^th}} flood was in many ways an exceptional, very fast happening event which took many people by surprise. At the gauging station Salzburg / Salzach (catchment area 4425 {km^2}) it took only eighteen hours from mean annual discharge (178 {m3/s}) to the hundred years flood (2300 {m3/s}). The August flood made clear, that there is a strong need for

  3. Economic optimization of flood prevention systems in the Netherlands

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Tsimopoulou, V.; Kok, M.; Vrijling, J.K.

    2015-01-01

    After the flood disaster of 1953, the Netherlands adopted a rational approach to flood risk management with the use of protection standards determined by means of cost-benefit analysis. Due to scientific and political developments that have recently taken place, an update of the Dutch protection

  4. New mechanism under International Flood Initiative toward robustness for flood management in the Asia Pacific region

    Science.gov (United States)

    Murase, M.; Yoshitani, J.; Takeuchi, K.; Koike, T.

    2015-12-01

    Climate change is likely to result in increases in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events. It is imperative that a good understanding is developed of how climate change affects the events that are reflected in hydrological extremes such as floods and how practitioners in water resources management deal with them. Since there is still major uncertainty as to how the impact of climate change affect actual water resources management, it is important to build robustness into management schemes and communities. Flood management under such variety of uncertainty favors the flexible and adaptive implementation both in top-down and bottom-up approaches. The former uses projections of global or spatially downscaled models to drive resource models and project resource impacts. The latter utilizes policy or planning tools to identify what changes in climate would be most threatening to their long-range operations. Especially for the bottom-up approaches, it is essential to identify the gap between what should be done and what has not been achieved for disaster risks. Indicators or index are appropriate tools to measure such gaps, but they are still in progress to cover the whole world. The International Flood Initiative (IFI), initiated in January 2005 by UNESCO and WMO in close cooperation with UNU and ISDR, IAHS and IAHR, has promoted an integrated approach to flood management to take advantage of floods and use of flood plains while reducing the social, environmental and economic risks. Its secretariat is located in ICHARM. The initiative objective is to support national platforms to practice evidence-based disaster risk reduction through mobilizing scientific and research networks at national, regional and international levels. The initiative is now preparing for a new mechanism to facilitate the integrated approach for flood management on the ground regionally in the Asia Pacific (IFI-AP) through monitoring, assessment and capacity building.

  5. The added value of system robustness analysis for flood risk management

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mens, M.J.P.; Klijn, F.

    2014-01-01

    Decision makers in fluvial flood risk management increasingly acknowledge that they have to prepare for extreme events. Flood risk is the most common basis on which to compare flood risk-reducing strategies. To take uncertainties into account the criteria of robustness and flexibility are advocated

  6. Application of RUNTA code in flood analyses

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Perez Martin, F.; Benitez Fonzalez, F.

    1994-01-01

    Flood probability analyses carried out to date indicate the need to evaluate a large number of flood scenarios. This necessity is due to a variety of reasons, the most important of which include: - Large number of potential flood sources - Wide variety of characteristics of flood sources - Large possibility of flood-affected areas becoming inter linked, depending on the location of the potential flood sources - Diversity of flood flows from one flood source, depending on the size of the rupture and mode of operation - Isolation times applicable - Uncertainties in respect of the structural resistance of doors, penetration seals and floors - Applicable degrees of obstruction of floor drainage system Consequently, a tool which carries out the large number of calculations usually required in flood analyses, with speed and flexibility, is considered necessary. The RUNTA Code enables the range of possible scenarios to be calculated numerically, in accordance with all those parameters which, as a result of previous flood analyses, it is necessary to take into account in order to cover all the possible floods associated with each flood area

  7. The land use potential of flood-prone rice fields using floating rice system in Bojonegoro regency in East Java

    Science.gov (United States)

    Irianto, H.; Mujiyo; Riptanti, E. W.; Qonita, A.

    2018-03-01

    Bojonegoro regency occupies the largest flood-prone rice fields of about 14,198 hectares, in East Java province. Floods commonly occur due to Bengawan Solo river over-burst, particularly in rainy season. The fields are potential for cultivating rice, but floods lasting for months causing these areas to be unproductive. The objective of this article is to examine the potential land use of flood prone rice fields in Bojonegoro regency using floating rice system as an effort to maintain productivity in rainy season. The method of this study is referential study about the rice production using floating cultivation system in other regions, which are later compared with the physical condition of the fields in Bojonegoro. The results of analysis show that rice cultivation using floating system can maintain rice production in flood prone areas during rainy season. The potential production of rice is 5-6 tons/ha. However, technical problems for cultivating rice cannot be ignored since farmers are not familiar with cultivating flooded fields. This article also explains alternatives of floating rice cultivation technique, which can be implemented effectively and efficiently. Pioneer work of developing floating rice in Bojonegoro that has been done by the Team of Faculty of Agriculture of UNS, Surakarta, is expected to serve as a medium for accelerating the adoption of cultivation technology innovation to farmers.

  8. Definition of Pluviometric Thresholds For A Real Time Flood Forecasting System In The Arno Watershed

    Science.gov (United States)

    Amadio, P.; Mancini, M.; Mazzetti, P.; Menduni, G.; Nativi, S.; Rabuffetti, D.; Ravazzani, G.; Rosso, R.

    The pluviometric flood forecasting thresholds are an easy method that helps river flood emergency management collecting data from limited area meteorologic model or telemetric raingauges. The thresholds represent the cumulated rainfall depth which generate critic discharge for a particular section. The thresholds were calculated for different sections of Arno river and for different antecedent moisture condition using the flood event distributed hydrologic model FEST. The model inputs were syntethic hietographs with different shape and duration. The system realibility has been verified by generating 500 year syntethic rainfall for 3 important subwatersheds of the studied area. A new technique to consider spatial variability of rainfall and soil properties effects on hydrograph has been investigated. The "Geomorphologic Weights" were so calculated. The alarm system has been implemented in a dedicated software (MIMI) that gets measured and forecast rainfall data from Autorità di Bacino and defines the state of the alert of the river sections.

  9. Flood monitoring and damage assessment using water indices: A case study of Pakistan flood-2012

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Akhtar Ali Memon

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper uses Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI of McFeeters (1996, Water Index (WI introduced by Rogers and Kearney (2004, referred to as Red and Short Wave Infra-Red (RSWIR and WI suggested as the best by Ji et al. (2009, referred to as Green and Short Wave Infra-Red (GSWIR for delineating and mapping of surface water using MODIS (Terra near real time images during 2012 floods in Pakistan. The results from above indices have been compared with Landsat ETM+ classified images aiming to assess the accuracy of the indices. Accuracy assessment has been performed using spatial statistical techniques and found NDWI, RSWIR and GSWIR with kappa coefficient (κ of 46.66%, 70.80% and 60.61% respectively. It has been observed using statistical analysis and visual interpretation (expert knowledge gained by past experience that the NDWI and GSWIR have tendencies to underestimate and overestimate respectively the inundated area. Keeping in view the above facts, RSWIR has proved to be the best of the three indices. In addition, assessment of the damages has been carried out considering accumulated flood extent obtained from RSWIR. The information derived proved to be essential and valuable for disaster management plan and rehabilitation.

  10. Uncertainty quantification in flood risk assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blöschl, Günter; Hall, Julia; Kiss, Andrea; Parajka, Juraj; Perdigão, Rui A. P.; Rogger, Magdalena; Salinas, José Luis; Viglione, Alberto

    2017-04-01

    Uncertainty is inherent to flood risk assessments because of the complexity of the human-water system, which is characterised by nonlinearities and interdependencies, because of limited knowledge about system properties and because of cognitive biases in human perception and decision-making. On top of the uncertainty associated with the assessment of the existing risk to extreme events, additional uncertainty arises because of temporal changes in the system due to climate change, modifications of the environment, population growth and the associated increase in assets. Novel risk assessment concepts are needed that take into account all these sources of uncertainty. They should be based on the understanding of how flood extremes are generated and how they change over time. They should also account for the dynamics of risk perception of decision makers and population in the floodplains. In this talk we discuss these novel risk assessment concepts through examples from Flood Frequency Hydrology, Socio-Hydrology and Predictions Under Change. We believe that uncertainty quantification in flood risk assessment should lead to a robust approach of integrated flood risk management aiming at enhancing resilience rather than searching for optimal defense strategies.

  11. An operational procedure for rapid flood risk assessment in Europe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dottori, Francesco; Kalas, Milan; Salamon, Peter; Bianchi, Alessandra; Alfieri, Lorenzo; Feyen, Luc

    2017-07-01

    The development of methods for rapid flood mapping and risk assessment is a key step to increase the usefulness of flood early warning systems and is crucial for effective emergency response and flood impact mitigation. Currently, flood early warning systems rarely include real-time components to assess potential impacts generated by forecasted flood events. To overcome this limitation, this study describes the benchmarking of an operational procedure for rapid flood risk assessment based on predictions issued by the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS). Daily streamflow forecasts produced for major European river networks are translated into event-based flood hazard maps using a large map catalogue derived from high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations. Flood hazard maps are then combined with exposure and vulnerability information, and the impacts of the forecasted flood events are evaluated in terms of flood-prone areas, economic damage and affected population, infrastructures and cities.An extensive testing of the operational procedure has been carried out by analysing the catastrophic floods of May 2014 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. The reliability of the flood mapping methodology is tested against satellite-based and report-based flood extent data, while modelled estimates of economic damage and affected population are compared against ground-based estimations. Finally, we evaluate the skill of risk estimates derived from EFAS flood forecasts with different lead times and combinations of probabilistic forecasts. Results highlight the potential of the real-time operational procedure in helping emergency response and management.

  12. After the flood is before the next flood - post event review of the Central European Floods of June 2013. Insights, recommendations and next steps for future flood prevention

    Science.gov (United States)

    Szoenyi, Michael; Mechler, Reinhard; McCallum, Ian

    2015-04-01

    perception and understanding of risk in the population. • Residual risk and the levee shadow effect - why the population "felt safe." • What is the overload case and how to implement it in flood protection systems? • Decision-making for the future under uncertainty - how to design to acceptable flood protection levels if we haven't seen yet what's physically possible. 3. How to protect - practical examples Finally, we outline practical examples for reducing the loss burden and risk over time. • "Flood protection hierarchy" - from location choice under a hazard perspective to mobile flood protection. • Risk-based approach and identification of critical infrastructure. • Integrated flood risk management in theory and practical application. • Role of insurance.

  13. Pluvial, urban flood mechanisms and characteristics - Assessment based on insurance claims

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sörensen, Johanna; Mobini, Shifteh

    2017-12-01

    Pluvial flooding is a problem in many cities and for city planning purpose the mechanisms behind pluvial flooding are of interest. Previous studies seldom use insurance claim data to analyse city scale characteristics that lead to flooding. In the present study, two long time series (∼20 years) of flood claims from property owners have been collected and analysed in detail to investigate the mechanisms and characteristics leading to urban flooding. The flood claim data come from the municipal water utility company and property owners with insurance that covers property loss from overland flooding, groundwater intrusion through basement walls and flooding from the drainage system. These data are used as a proxy for flood severity for several events in the Swedish city of Malmö. It is discussed which rainfall characteristics give most flooding and why some rainfall events do not lead to severe flooding, how city scale topography and sewerage system type influence spatial distribution of flood claims, and which impact high sea level has on flooding in Malmö. Three severe flood events are described in detail and compared with a number of smaller flood events. It was found that the main mechanisms and characteristics of flood extent and its spatial distribution in Malmö are intensity and spatial distribution of rainfall, distance to the main sewer system as well as overland flow paths, and type of drainage system, while high sea level has little impact on the flood extent. Finally, measures that could be taken to lower the flood risk in Malmö, and other cities with similar characteristics, are discussed.

  14. Flood risk analysis for flood control and sediment transportation in sandy regions: A case study in the Loess Plateau, China

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Aijun; Chang, Jianxia; Wang, Yimin; Huang, Qiang; Zhou, Shuai

    2018-05-01

    Traditional flood risk analysis focuses on the probability of flood events exceeding the design flood of downstream hydraulic structures while neglecting the influence of sedimentation in river channels on regional flood control systems. This work advances traditional flood risk analysis by proposing a univariate and copula-based bivariate hydrological risk framework which incorporates both flood control and sediment transport. In developing the framework, the conditional probabilities of different flood events under various extreme precipitation scenarios are estimated by exploiting the copula-based model. Moreover, a Monte Carlo-based algorithm is designed to quantify the sampling uncertainty associated with univariate and bivariate hydrological risk analyses. Two catchments located on the Loess plateau are selected as study regions: the upper catchments of the Xianyang and Huaxian stations (denoted as UCX and UCH, respectively). The univariate and bivariate return periods, risk and reliability in the context of uncertainty for the purposes of flood control and sediment transport are assessed for the study regions. The results indicate that sedimentation triggers higher risks of damaging the safety of local flood control systems compared with the event that AMF exceeds the design flood of downstream hydraulic structures in the UCX and UCH. Moreover, there is considerable sampling uncertainty affecting the univariate and bivariate hydrologic risk evaluation, which greatly challenges measures of future flood mitigation. In addition, results also confirm that the developed framework can estimate conditional probabilities associated with different flood events under various extreme precipitation scenarios aiming for flood control and sediment transport. The proposed hydrological risk framework offers a promising technical reference for flood risk analysis in sandy regions worldwide.

  15. Temporal clustering of floods in Germany: Do flood-rich and flood-poor periods exist?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Merz, Bruno; Nguyen, Viet Dung; Vorogushyn, Sergiy

    2016-10-01

    The repeated occurrence of exceptional floods within a few years, such as the Rhine floods in 1993 and 1995 and the Elbe and Danube floods in 2002 and 2013, suggests that floods in Central Europe may be organized in flood-rich and flood-poor periods. This hypothesis is studied by testing the significance of temporal clustering in flood occurrence (peak-over-threshold) time series for 68 catchments across Germany for the period 1932-2005. To assess the robustness of the results, different methods are used: Firstly, the index of dispersion, which quantifies the departure from a homogeneous Poisson process, is investigated. Further, the time-variation of the flood occurrence rate is derived by non-parametric kernel implementation and the significance of clustering is evaluated via parametric and non-parametric tests. Although the methods give consistent overall results, the specific results differ considerably. Hence, we recommend applying different methods when investigating flood clustering. For flood estimation and risk management, it is of relevance to understand whether clustering changes with flood severity and time scale. To this end, clustering is assessed for different thresholds and time scales. It is found that the majority of catchments show temporal clustering at the 5% significance level for low thresholds and time scales of one to a few years. However, clustering decreases substantially with increasing threshold and time scale. We hypothesize that flood clustering in Germany is mainly caused by catchment memory effects along with intra- to inter-annual climate variability, and that decadal climate variability plays a minor role.

  16. The European Flood Risk Directive and Ethics

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mostert, E.; Doorn, N.

    2012-01-01

    The European Flood risk directive (2007/60/EC) requires EU Member States to review their system of flood risk management. In doing so, they will have to face ethical issues inherent in flood risk management. This paper discusses three such issues, using examples from the Netherlands. These issues

  17. Policy learning for flood mitigation: a longitudinal assessment of the community rating system in Florida.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brody, Samuel D; Zahran, Sammy; Highfield, Wesley E; Bernhardt, Sarah P; Vedlitz, Arnold

    2009-06-01

    Floods continue to inflict the most damage upon human communities among all natural hazards in the United States. Because localized flooding tends to be spatially repetitive over time, local decisionmakers often have an opportunity to learn from previous events and make proactive policy adjustments to reduce the adverse effects of a subsequent storm. Despite the importance of understanding the degree to which local jurisdictions learn from flood risks and under what circumstances, little if any empirical, longitudinal research has been conducted along these lines. This article addresses the research gap by examining the change in local flood mitigation policies in Florida from 1999 to 2005. We track 18 different mitigation activities organized into four series of activities under the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Community Rating System (CRS) for every local jurisdiction in Florida participating in the FEMA program on a yearly time step. We then identify the major factors contributing to policy changes based on CRS scores over the seven-year study period. Using multivariate statistical models to analyze both natural and social science data, we isolate the effects of several variables categorized into the following groups: hydrologic conditions, flood disaster history, socioeconomic and human capital controls. Results indicate that local jurisdictions do in fact learn from histories of flood risk and this process is expedited under specific conditions.

  18. Sustainable and non-conventional monitoring systems to mitigate natural hazards in low income economies: the 4onse project approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cannata, Massimiliano; Ratnayake, Rangajeewa; Antonovic, Milan; Strigaro, Daniele

    2017-04-01

    Environmental monitoring systems in low economies countries are often in decline, outdated or missing with the consequence that there is a very scarce availability and accessibility to these information that are vital for coping and mitigating natural hazards. Non-conventional monitoring systems based on open technologies may constitute a viable solution to create low cost and sustainable monitoring systems that may be fully developed, deployed and maintained at local level without lock-in dependances on copyrights or patents or high costs of replacements. The 4onse research project , funded under the Research for Development program of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Office for Development and Cooperation, propose a complete monitoring system that integrates Free & Open Source Software, Open Hardware, Open Data, and Open Standards. After its engineering, it will be tested in the Deduru Oya catchment (Sri Lanka) to evaluate the system and develop a water management information system to optimize the regulation of artificial basins levels and mitigate flash floods. One of the objective is to better scientifically understand strengths, criticalities and applicabilities in terms of data quality; system durability; management costs; performances; sustainability. Results, challenges and experiences from the first six months of the projects will be presented with particular focus on the activities of synergies building and data collection and dissemination system advances.

  19. Major floods, poor land use delay return of sedimentation to normal rates

    Science.gov (United States)

    Henry W. Anderson

    1972-01-01

    Recovery from flood-accelerated sedimentation affects both estimates of long-term average deposition and short-term monitoring of changes. "Years to return to normal" for 10 watersheds in northern California after a major flood accelerated sediment concentrations were analyzed. Returns to normalcy took from 0 to 9 years; rate of decline was related to both...

  20. Integrated photovoltaic (PV) monitoring system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mahinder Singh, Balbir Singh; Husain, NurSyahidah; Mohamed, Norani Muti

    2012-09-01

    The main aim of this research work is to design an accurate and reliable monitoring system to be integrated with solar electricity generating system. The performance monitoring system is required to ensure that the PVEGS is operating at an optimum level. The PV monitoring system is able to measure all the important parameters that determine an optimum performance. The measured values are recorded continuously, as the data acquisition system is connected to a computer, and data is stored at fixed intervals. The data can be locally used and can also be transmitted via internet. The data that appears directly on the local monitoring system is displayed via graphical user interface that was created by using Visual basic and Apache software was used for data transmission The accuracy and reliability of the developed monitoring system was tested against the data that captured simultaneously by using a standard power quality analyzer device. The high correlation which is 97% values indicates the level of accuracy of the monitoring system. The aim of leveraging on a system for continuous monitoring system is achieved, both locally, and can be viewed simultaneously at a remote system.

  1. The Calculation of Flooding Level using CFX Code

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Oh, Seo Bin; Kim, Keon Yeop; Lee, Hyung Ho

    2015-01-01

    The plant design should consider internal flooding by postulated pipe ruptures, component failures, actuation of spray systems, and improper system alignment. The flooding causes failure of safety-related equipment and affects the integrity of the structure. The safety-related equipment should be installed above the flood level for protection against flooding effects. Conservative estimates of the flood level are important when a DBA occurs. The flooding level can be calculated simply applying Bernoulli's equation. However, in this study, a realistic calculation is performed with ANSYS CFX code. In calculation with CFX, air-core vortex phenomena, and turbulent flow can be simulated, which cannot be calculated analytically. The flooding level is evaluated by analytical calculation and CFX analysis for an assumed condition. The flood level is calculated as 0.71m and 1.1m analytically and with CFX simulation, respectively. Comparing the analytical calculation and simulation, they are similar, but the analytical calculation is not conservative. There are many factors reducing the drainage capacity such as air-core vortex, intake of air, and turbulent flow. Therefore, in case of flood level evaluation by analytical calculation, a sufficient safety margin should be considered

  2. Urban flood risk warning under rapid urbanization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Yangbo; Zhou, Haolan; Zhang, Hui; Du, Guoming; Zhou, Jinhui

    2015-05-01

    In the past decades, China has observed rapid urbanization, the nation's urban population reached 50% in 2000, and is still in steady increase. Rapid urbanization in China has an adverse impact on urban hydrological processes, particularly in increasing the urban flood risks and causing serious urban flooding losses. Urban flooding also increases health risks such as causing epidemic disease break out, polluting drinking water and damaging the living environment. In the highly urbanized area, non-engineering measurement is the main way for managing urban flood risk, such as flood risk warning. There is no mature method and pilot study for urban flood risk warning, the purpose of this study is to propose the urban flood risk warning method for the rapidly urbanized Chinese cities. This paper first presented an urban flood forecasting model, which produces urban flood inundation index for urban flood risk warning. The model has 5 modules. The drainage system and grid dividing module divides the whole city terrain into drainage systems according to its first-order river system, and delineates the drainage system into grids based on the spatial structure with irregular gridding technique; the precipitation assimilation module assimilates precipitation for every grids which is used as the model input, which could either be the radar based precipitation estimation or interpolated one from rain gauges; runoff production module classifies the surface into pervious and impervious surface, and employs different methods to calculate the runoff respectively; surface runoff routing module routes the surface runoff and determines the inundation index. The routing on surface grid is calculated according to the two dimensional shallow water unsteady flow algorithm, the routing on land channel and special channel is calculated according to the one dimensional unsteady flow algorithm. This paper then proposed the urban flood risk warning method that is called DPSIR model based

  3. Setting up a French national flash flood warning system for ungauged catchments based on the AIGA method

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Javelle Pierre

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Occurring at small temporal and spatial scales, flash floods (FF can cause severe economic damages and human losses. To better anticipate such events and mitigate their impacts, the French Ministry in charge of Ecology has decided to set up a national FF warning system over the French territory. This automated system will be run by the SCHAPI, the French national service in charge of flood forecasting, providing warnings for fast-responding ungauged catchments (area ranging from ~10 to ~1000 km2. It will therefore be complementary to the SCHAPI’s national “vigilance” system which concerns only gauged catchments. The FF warning system to be implemented in 2017 will be based on a discharge-threshold flood warning method called AIGA (Javelle et al. 2014. This method has been experimented in real time in the south of France in the RHYTMME project (http://rhytmme.irstea.fr. It consists in comparing discharges generated by a simple conceptual hourly hydrologic model run at a 1-km2 resolution to reference flood quantiles of different (e.g., 2-, 10- and 50-year return periods. Therefore the system characterizes in real time the severity of ongoing events by the range of the return period estimated by AIGA at any point along the river network. The hydrologic model ingests operational rainfall radar-gauge products from Météo-France and takes into account the baseflow and the initial soil humidity conditions to better estimate the basin response to rainfall inputs. To meet the requirements of the future FF warning system, the AIGA method has been extended to the whole French territory (except Corsica and overseas French territories. The calibration, regionalization and validation procedures of the hydrologic model were carried out using data for ~700 hydrometric stations from the 2002-2015 period. Performance of the warning system was evaluated with various contingency criteria (e.g., probability of detection and success rate. Furthermore, specific

  4. Distributed Simulation of City Inundation by Coupled Surface and Subsurface Porous Flow for Urban Flood Decision Support System

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Krzhizhanovskaya, V.V.; Melnikova, N.B.; Chirkin, A.M.; Ivanov, S.V.; Boukhanovsky, A.V.; Sloot, P.M.A.

    2013-01-01

    We present a decision support system for flood early warning and disaster management. It includes the models for data- driven meteorological predictions, for simulation of atmospheric pressure, wind, long sea waves and seiches; a module for optimization of flood barrier gates operation; models for

  5. The development of flood map in Malaysia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zakaria, Siti Fairus; Zin, Rosli Mohamad; Mohamad, Ismail; Balubaid, Saeed; Mydin, Shaik Hussein; MDR, E. M. Roodienyanto

    2017-11-01

    In Malaysia, flash floods are common occurrences throughout the year in flood prone areas. In terms of flood extent, flash floods affect smaller areas but because of its tendency to occur in densely urbanized areas, the value of damaged property is high and disruption to traffic flow and businesses are substantial. However, in river floods especially the river floods of Kelantan and Pahang, the flood extent is widespread and can extend over 1,000 square kilometers. Although the value of property and density of affected population is lower, the damage inflicted by these floods can also be high because the area affected is large. In order to combat these floods, various flood mitigation measures have been carried out. Structural flood mitigation alone can only provide protection levels from 10 to 100 years Average Recurrence Intervals (ARI). One of the economically effective non-structural approaches in flood mitigation and flood management is using a geospatial technology which involves flood forecasting and warning services to the flood prone areas. This approach which involves the use of Geographical Information Flood Forecasting system also includes the generation of a series of flood maps. There are three types of flood maps namely Flood Hazard Map, Flood Risk Map and Flood Evacuation Map. Flood Hazard Map is used to determine areas susceptible to flooding when discharge from a stream exceeds the bank-full stage. Early warnings of incoming flood events will enable the flood victims to prepare themselves before flooding occurs. Properties and life's can be saved by keeping their movable properties above the flood levels and if necessary, an early evacuation from the area. With respect to flood fighting, an early warning with reference through a series of flood maps including flood hazard map, flood risk map and flood evacuation map of the approaching flood should be able to alert the organization in charge of the flood fighting actions and the authority to

  6. Early physiological flood tolerance is followed by slow post-flooding root recovery in the dryland riparian tree Eucalyptus camaldulensis subsp. refulgens.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Argus, R E; Colmer, T D; Grierson, P F

    2015-06-01

    We investigated physiological and morphological responses to flooding and recovery in Eucalyptus camaldulensis subsp. refulgens, a riparian tree species from a dryland region prone to intense episodic floods. Seedlings in soil flooded for 88 d produced extensive adventitious roots, displayed stem hypertrophy (stem diameter increased by 93%) and increased root porosity owing to aerenchyma formation. Net photosynthesis (Pn) and stomatal conductance (gs) were maintained for at least 2 weeks of soil flooding, contrasting with previous studies of other subspecies of E. camaldulensis. Gradual declines followed in both gs (30% less than controls) and Pn (19% less). Total leaf soluble sugars did not differ between flooded and control plants. Root mass did not recover 32 d after flooding ceased, but gs was not lower than controls, suggesting the root system was able to functionally compensate. However, the limited root growth during recovery after flooding was surprising given the importance of extensive root systems in dryland environments. We conclude that early flood tolerance could be an adaptation to capitalize on scarce water resources in a water-limited environment. Overall, our findings highlight the need to assess flooding responses in relation to a species' fitness for particular flood regimes or ecological niches. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  7. Flooding During Drought: Learning from Stakeholder Engagement & Partner Coordination in the California-Nevada Drought Early Warning System (DEWS)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheffield, A. M.

    2017-12-01

    After more than 5 years of drought, extreme precipitation brought drought relief in California and Nevada and presents an opportunity to reflect upon lessons learned while planning for the future. NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) California-Nevada Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) in June 2017 convened a regional coordination workshop to provide a forum to discuss and build upon past drought efforts in the region and increase coordination, collaboration and information sharing across the region as a whole. Participants included federal, tribal, state, academic, and local partners who provided a post-mortem on the recent drought and impacts as well as recent innovations in drought monitoring, forecasts, and decision support tools in response to the historic drought. This presentation will highlight lessons learned from stakeholder outreach and engagement around flooding during drought, and pathways for moving forward coordination and collaboration in the region. Additional focus will be on the potential opportunities from examining California decision making calendars from this drought. Identified gaps and challenges will also be shared, such as the need to connect observations with social impacts, capacity building around available tools and resources, and future drought monitoring needs. Drought will continue to impact California and Nevada, and the CA-NV DEWS works to make climate and drought science readily available, easily understandable and usable for decision makers; and to improve the capacity of stakeholders to better monitor, forecast, plan for and cope with the impacts of drought.

  8. Flood Catastrophe Model for Designing Optimal Flood Insurance Program: Estimating Location-Specific Premiums in the Netherlands.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ermolieva, T; Filatova, T; Ermoliev, Y; Obersteiner, M; de Bruijn, K M; Jeuken, A

    2017-01-01

    As flood risks grow worldwide, a well-designed insurance program engaging various stakeholders becomes a vital instrument in flood risk management. The main challenge concerns the applicability of standard approaches for calculating insurance premiums of rare catastrophic losses. This article focuses on the design of a flood-loss-sharing program involving private insurance based on location-specific exposures. The analysis is guided by a developed integrated catastrophe risk management (ICRM) model consisting of a GIS-based flood model and a stochastic optimization procedure with respect to location-specific risk exposures. To achieve the stability and robustness of the program towards floods with various recurrences, the ICRM uses stochastic optimization procedure, which relies on quantile-related risk functions of a systemic insolvency involving overpayments and underpayments of the stakeholders. Two alternative ways of calculating insurance premiums are compared: the robust derived with the ICRM and the traditional average annual loss approach. The applicability of the proposed model is illustrated in a case study of a Rotterdam area outside the main flood protection system in the Netherlands. Our numerical experiments demonstrate essential advantages of the robust premiums, namely, that they: (1) guarantee the program's solvency under all relevant flood scenarios rather than one average event; (2) establish a tradeoff between the security of the program and the welfare of locations; and (3) decrease the need for other risk transfer and risk reduction measures. © 2016 Society for Risk Analysis.

  9. Sequential planning of flood protection infrastructure under limited historic flood record and climate change uncertainty

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dittes, Beatrice; Špačková, Olga; Straub, Daniel

    2017-04-01

    Flood protection is often designed to safeguard people and property following regulations and standards, which specify a target design flood protection level, such as the 100-year flood level prescribed in Germany (DWA, 2011). In practice, the magnitude of such an event is only known within a range of uncertainty, which is caused by limited historic records and uncertain climate change impacts, among other factors (Hall & Solomatine, 2008). As more observations and improved climate projections become available in the future, the design flood estimate changes and the capacity of the flood protection may be deemed insufficient at a future point in time. This problem can be mitigated by the implementation of flexible flood protection systems (that can easily be adjusted in the future) and/or by adding an additional reserve to the flood protection, i.e. by applying a safety factor to the design. But how high should such a safety factor be? And how much should the decision maker be willing to pay to make the system flexible, i.e. what is the Value of Flexibility (Špačková & Straub, 2017)? We propose a decision model that identifies cost-optimal decisions on flood protection capacity in the face of uncertainty (Dittes et al. 2017). It considers sequential adjustments of the protection system during its lifetime, taking into account its flexibility. The proposed framework is based on pre-posterior Bayesian decision analysis, using Decision Trees and Markov Decision Processes, and is fully quantitative. It can include a wide range of uncertainty components such as uncertainty associated with limited historic record or uncertain climate or socio-economic change. It is shown that since flexible systems are less costly to adjust when flood estimates are changing, they justify initially lower safety factors. Investigation on the Value of Flexibility (VoF) demonstrates that VoF depends on the type and degree of uncertainty, on the learning effect (i.e. kind and quality of

  10. [Climate changes, floods, and health consequences].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michelozzi, Paola; de' Donato, Francesca

    2014-02-01

    In the European Region, floods are the most common natural disaster, causing extensive damage and disruption. In Italy, it has been estimated that over 68% of municipalities are at high hydrogeological risk and with the recent intense rainfall events local populations have been facing severe disruptions. The health consequences of floods are wide ranging and are dependent upon the vulnerability of the environment and the local population. Health effects can be a direct or indirect consequence of flooding. The immediate health impacts of floods include drowning, heart attacks, injuries and hypothermia. The indirect effects include, injuries and infections, water-borne infectious disease, mental health problems, respiratory disease and allergies in both the medium and long term after a flood. Future efforts should be addressed to integrate health preparedness and prevention measures into emergency flood plans and hydrological warning systems.

  11. Technical evaluation of the susceptibility of safety-related systems to flooding caused by the failure of non-Category I systems for Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant, Units 3 and 4

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Collins, E.K.

    1979-08-01

    Three separate reviews of the Turkey Point Units 3 and 4 were conducted by the FPLCO between 1972 and 1975. Initially, at the request of NBC in 1972, the FPLCO reviewed several water systems as sources of flooding. Subsequently, as a result of an abnormal occurrence, the drainage system was reviewed. Finally, the facilities were again reviewed at NRC's request and both the potential sources of flooding and safety-related equipment which could be damaged by flooding were identified. The sources of flooding and the appropriate safety equipment are discussed. An evaluation is presented of measures that were taken by FPLCO to minimize the danger of flooding and to protect safety-related equipment

  12. Resolution Enhancement of MODIS-Derived Water Indices for Studying Persistent Flooding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Underwood, L. W.; Kalcic, Maria; Fletcher, Rose

    2012-01-01

    -m MODIS, with enhanced features, and the approximated daily 30-m high-resolution image based on Landsat data. The algorithm was developed and tested over the Calcasieu-Sabine Basin, which was heavily inundated by storm surge from Hurricane Ike to study the extent and duration of flooding following the storm. Time series for 2000-2009, covering flooding events by Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008, were derived. High resolution images were formed for all days in 2008 between the first cloud free Landsat scene and the last cloud-free Landsat scene. To refine and validate flooding maps, each time series was compared to Louisiana Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS) station water levels adjusted to marsh to optimize thresholds for MODIS-derived time series of NDWI. Seasonal fluctuations were adjusted by subtracting ten year average NDWI for marshes, excluding the hurricane events. Results from different NDWI indices and a combination of indices were compared. Flooding persistence that was mapped with higher-resolution data showed some improvement over the original MODIS time series estimates. The advantage of this novel technique is that improved mapping of extent and duration of inundation can be provided.

  13. Drivers of flood damage on event level

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kreibich, H.; Aerts, J. C. J. H.; Apel, H.

    2016-01-01

    example are the 2002 and 2013 floods in the Elbe and Danube catchments in Germany. The 2002 flood caused the highest economic damage (EUR 11600 million) due to a natural hazard event in Germany. Damage was so high due to extreme flood hazard triggered by extreme precipitation and a high number......-level mitigation measures, 3) more effective early warning and improved coordination of disaster response and 4) a more targeted maintenance of flood defence systems and their deliberate relocation. Thus, despite higher hydrological severity damage due to the 2013 flood was significantly lower than in 2002. In our...

  14. Flood Risk Assessment as a Part of Integrated Flood and Drought Analysis. Case Study: Southern Thailand

    Science.gov (United States)

    Prabnakorn, Saowanit; Suryadi, Fransiscus X.; de Fraiture, Charlotte

    2015-04-01

    Flood and drought are two main meteorological catastrophes that have created adverse consequences to more than 80% of total casualties universally, 50% by flood and 31% by drought. Those natural hazards have the tendency of increasing frequency and degree of severity and it is expected that climate change will exacerbate their occurrences and impacts. In addition, growing population and society interference are the other key factors that pressure on and exacerbate the adverse impacts. Consequently, nowadays, the loss from any disasters becomes less and less acceptable bringing about more people's consciousness on mitigation measures and management strategies and policies. In general, due to the difference in their inherent characteristics and time occurrences flood and drought mitigation and protection have been separately implemented, managed, and supervised by different group of authorities. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop an integrated mitigation measure or a management policy able to surmount both problems to acceptable levels and is conveniently monitored by the same group of civil servants which will be economical in both short- and long-term. As aforementioned of the distinction of fundamental peculiarities and occurrence, the assessment processes of floods and droughts are separately performed using their own specific techniques. In the first part of the research flood risk assessment is focused in order to delineate the flood prone area. The study area is a river plain in southern Thailand where flooding is influenced by monsoon and depression. The work is mainly concentrated on physically-based computational modeling and an assortment of tools was applied for: data completion, areal rainfall interpolation, statistical distribution, rainfall-runoff analysis and flow model simulation. The outcome from the simulation can be concluded that the flood prone areas susceptible to inundation are along the riparian areas, particularly at the

  15. Inductive Monitoring System (IMS)

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — IMS: Inductive Monitoring System The Inductive Monitoring System (IMS) is a tool that uses a data mining technique called clustering to extract models of normal...

  16. CERN safety system monitoring - SSM

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hakulinen, T.; Ninin, P.; Valentini, F.; Gonzalez, J.; Salatko-Petryszcze, C.

    2012-01-01

    CERN SSM (Safety System Monitoring) is a system for monitoring state-of-health of the various access and safety systems of the CERN site and accelerator infrastructure. The emphasis of SSM is on the needs of maintenance and system operation with the aim of providing an independent and reliable verification path of the basic operational parameters of each system. Included are all network-connected devices, such as PLCs (local purpose control unit), servers, panel displays, operator posts, etc. The basic monitoring engine of SSM is a freely available system-monitoring framework Zabbix, on top of which a simplified traffic-light-type web-interface has been built. The web-interface of SSM is designed to be ultra-light to facilitate access from hand-held devices over slow connections. The underlying Zabbix system offers history and notification mechanisms typical of advanced monitoring systems. (authors)

  17. IFIS Model-Plus: A Web-Based GUI for Visualization, Comparison and Evaluation of Distributed Flood Forecasts and Hindcasts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krajewski, W. F.; Della Libera Zanchetta, A.; Mantilla, R.; Demir, I.

    2017-12-01

    This work explores the use of hydroinformatics tools to provide an user friendly and accessible interface for executing and assessing the output of realtime flood forecasts using distributed hydrological models. The main result is the implementation of a web system that uses an Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS)-based environment for graphical displays of rainfall-runoff simulation results for both real-time and past storm events. It communicates with ASYNCH ODE solver to perform large-scale distributed hydrological modeling based on segmentation of the terrain into hillslope-link hydrologic units. The cyber-platform also allows hindcast of model performance by testing multiple model configurations and assumptions of vertical flows in the soils. The scope of the currently implemented system is the entire set of contributing watersheds for the territory of the state of Iowa. The interface provides resources for visualization of animated maps for different water-related modeled states of the environment, including flood-waves propagation with classification of flood magnitude, runoff generation, surface soil moisture and total water column in the soil. Additional tools for comparing different model configurations and performing model evaluation by comparing to observed variables at monitored sites are also available. The user friendly interface has been published to the web under the URL http://ifis.iowafloodcenter.org/ifis/sc/modelplus/.

  18. Lessons learned from Khartoum flash flood impacts: An integrated assessment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mahmood, Mohamad Ibrahim; Elagib, Nadir Ahmed; Horn, Finlay; Saad, Suhair A G

    2017-12-01

    This study aims at enabling the compilation of key lessons for decision makers and urban planners in rapidly urbanizing cities regarding the identification of representative, chief causal natural and human factors for the increased level of flash flood risk. To achieve this, the impacts of flash flood events of 2013 and 2014 in the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, were assessed using seven integrated approaches, i.e. rainfall data analysis, document analysis of affected people and houses, observational fieldwork in the worst flood affected areas, people's perception of causes and mitigation measures through household interviews, reported drinking water quality, reported water-related diseases and social risk assessment. Several lessons have been developed as follows. Urban planners must recognize the devastating risks of building within natural pathways of ephemeral watercourses. They must also ensure effective drainage infrastructures and physio-geographical investigations prior to developing urban areas. The existing urban drainage systems become ineffective due to blockage by urban waste. Building of unauthorized drainage and embankment structures by locals often cause greater flood problems than normal. The urban runoff is especially problematic for residential areas built within low-lying areas having naturally low infiltration capacity, as surface water can rapidly collect within hollows and depressions, or beside elevated roads that preclude the free flow of floodwater. Weak housing and infrastructure quality are especially vulnerable to flash flooding and even to rainfall directly. Establishment of services infrastructure is imperative for flash flood disaster risk reduction. Water supply should be from lower aquifers to avoid contaminant groundwater. Regular monitoring of water quality and archiving of its indicators help identify water-related diseases and sources of water contamination in the event of environmental disasters such as floods. Though the

  19. Coping with Pluvial Floods by Private Households

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Viktor Rözer

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Pluvial floods have caused severe damage to urban areas in recent years. With a projected increase in extreme precipitation as well as an ongoing urbanization, pluvial flood damage is expected to increase in the future. Therefore, further insights, especially on the adverse consequences of pluvial floods and their mitigation, are needed. To gain more knowledge, empirical damage data from three different pluvial flood events in Germany were collected through computer-aided telephone interviews. Pluvial flood awareness as well as flood experience were found to be low before the respective flood events. The level of private precaution increased considerably after all events, but is mainly focused on measures that are easy to implement. Lower inundation depths, smaller potential losses as compared with fluvial floods, as well as the fact that pluvial flooding may occur everywhere, are expected to cause a shift in damage mitigation from precaution to emergency response. However, an effective implementation of emergency measures was constrained by a low dissemination of early warnings in the study areas. Further improvements of early warning systems including dissemination as well as a rise in pluvial flood preparedness are important to reduce future pluvial flood damage.

  20. The impact of bathymetry input on flood simulations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khanam, M.; Cohen, S.

    2017-12-01

    Flood prediction and mitigation systems are inevitable for improving public safety and community resilience all over the worldwide. Hydraulic simulations of flood events are becoming an increasingly efficient tool for studying and predicting flood events and susceptibility. A consistent limitation of hydraulic simulations of riverine dynamics is the lack of information about river bathymetry as most terrain data record water surface elevation. The impact of this limitation on the accuracy on hydraulic simulations of flood has not been well studies over a large range of flood magnitude and modeling frameworks. Advancing our understanding of this topic is timely given emerging national and global efforts for developing automated flood predictions systems (e.g. NOAA National Water Center). Here we study the response of flood simulation to the incorporation of different bathymetry and floodplain surveillance source. Different hydraulic models are compared, Mike-Flood, a 2D hydrodynamic model, and GSSHA, a hydrology/hydraulics model. We test a hypothesis that the impact of inclusion/exclusion of bathymetry data on hydraulic model results will vary in its magnitude as a function of river size. This will allow researcher and stake holders more accurate predictions of flood events providing useful information that will help local communities in a vulnerable flood zone to mitigate flood hazards. Also, it will help to evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of different modeling frameworks and gage their dependency on detailed bathymetry input data.

  1. Application of Flood Nomograph for Flood Forecasting in Urban Areas

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eui Hoon Lee

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Imperviousness has increased due to urbanization, as has the frequency of extreme rainfall events by climate change. Various countermeasures, such as structural and nonstructural measures, are required to prepare for these effects. Flood forecasting is a representative nonstructural measure. Flood forecasting techniques have been developed for the prevention of repetitive flood damage in urban areas. It is difficult to apply some flood forecasting techniques using training processes because training needs to be applied at every usage. The other flood forecasting techniques that use rainfall data predicted by radar are not appropriate for small areas, such as single drainage basins. In this study, a new flood forecasting technique is suggested to reduce flood damage in urban areas. The flood nomograph consists of the first flooding nodes in rainfall runoff simulations with synthetic rainfall data at each duration. When selecting the first flooding node, the initial amount of synthetic rainfall is 1 mm, which increases in 1 mm increments until flooding occurs. The advantage of this flood forecasting technique is its simple application using real-time rainfall data. This technique can be used to prepare a preemptive response in the process of urban flood management.

  2. Development of realtime, handheld and portable flood distribution and water quality sensor based android smartphone

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rachmatika, Ratih; Adriyanto, Feri

    2017-09-01

    Current sensors to monitor water quality are made of manual sensors, which reported to have good performance. However, the major problems, which manual process to get the data. In addition, the data interpretation takes a long time. Due to these problems, a new approach needs to be introduced into the process to prevent a long data acquisition. Therefore, the SIAGA application was proposed. The application of SIAGA is divided into two main applications which are SIBA (Siaga Banjir) and SIAB (Siaga Air Bersih). We using WiFi system which is located at points along the flow of river.. The result can be monitored in the online application based on smartphone which is divided into the river water quality, potential sources of pollution and flood area. Each WiFi point is completed with the instruments which are divided into the sensors that can do the identification of parameters to determine the water quality such as temperature, pH, water level and turbidity. This instrument completed using GPS (Global Positioning System), Full Map menu. The instrument was succesfully monitoredthe flood distribution and water quality in Bengawan Solo river.

  3. Monitoring of levees, bridges, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure during the 2011 flooding in the Mississippi River Basin: Chapter J in 2011 floods of the central United States

    Science.gov (United States)

    Densmore, Brenda K.; Burton, Bethany L.; Dietsch, Benjamin J.; Cannia, James C.; Huizinga, Richard J.

    2014-01-01

    During the 2011 Mississippi River Basin flood, the U.S. Geological Survey evaluated aspects of critical river infrastructure at the request of and in support of local, State, and Federal Agencies. Geotechnical and hydrographic data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey at numerous locations were able to provide needed information about 2011 flood effects to those managing the critical infrastructure. These data were collected and processed in a short time frame to provide managers the ability to make a timely evaluation of the safety of the infrastructure and, when needed, to take action to secure and protect critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure surveyed by the U.S. Geological Survey included levees, bridges, pipeline crossings, power plant intakes and outlets, and an electrical transmission tower. Capacitively coupled resistivity data collected along the flood-protection levees surrounding the Omaha Public Power District Nebraska City power plant (Missouri River Levee Unit R573), mapped the near-subsurface electrical properties of the levee and the materials immediately below it. The near-subsurface maps provided a better understanding of the levee construction and the nature of the lithology beneath the levee. Comparison of the capacitively coupled resistivity surveys and soil borings indicated that low-resistivity value material composing the levee generally is associated with lean clay and silt to about 2 to 4 meters below the surface, overlying a more resistive layer associated with sand deposits. In general, the resistivity structure becomes more resistive to the south and the southern survey sections correlate well with the borehole data that indicate thinner clay and silt at the surface and thicker sand sequences at depth in these sections. With the resistivity data Omaha Public Power District could focus monitoring efforts on areas with higher resistivity values (coarser-grained deposits or more loosely compacted section), which typically are

  4. Probabilistic mapping of flood-induced backscatter changes in SAR time series

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schlaffer, Stefan; Chini, Marco; Giustarini, Laura; Matgen, Patrick

    2017-04-01

    The information content of flood extent maps can be increased considerably by including information on the uncertainty of the flood area delineation. This additional information can be of benefit in flood forecasting and monitoring. Furthermore, flood probability maps can be converted to binary maps showing flooded and non-flooded areas by applying a threshold probability value pF = 0.5. In this study, a probabilistic change detection approach for flood mapping based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) time series is proposed. For this purpose, conditional probability density functions (PDFs) for land and open water surfaces were estimated from ENVISAT ASAR Wide Swath (WS) time series containing >600 images using a reference mask of permanent water bodies. A pixel-wise harmonic model was used to account for seasonality in backscatter from land areas caused by soil moisture and vegetation dynamics. The approach was evaluated for a large-scale flood event along the River Severn, United Kingdom. The retrieved flood probability maps were compared to a reference flood mask derived from high-resolution aerial imagery by means of reliability diagrams. The obtained performance measures indicate both high reliability and confidence although there was a slight under-estimation of the flood extent, which may in part be attributed to topographically induced radar shadows along the edges of the floodplain. Furthermore, the results highlight the importance of local incidence angle for the separability between flooded and non-flooded areas as specular reflection properties of open water surfaces increase with a more oblique viewing geometry.

  5. Hydrological and hydraulic models for determination of flood-prone and flood inundation areas

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aksoy, Hafzullah; Sadan Ozgur Kirca, Veysel; Burgan, Halil Ibrahim; Kellecioglu, Dorukhan

    2016-05-01

    Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in most studies on water resources. Especially, when the topography and geomorphology of study area are considered, GIS can ease the work load. Detailed data should be used in this kind of studies. Because of, either the complication of the models or the requirement of highly detailed data, model outputs can be obtained fast only with a good optimization. The aim in this study, firstly, is to determine flood-prone areas in a watershed by using a hydrological model considering two wetness indexes; the topographical wetness index, and the SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses) wetness index. The wetness indexes were obtained in the Quantum GIS (QGIS) software by using the Digital Elevation Model of the study area. Flood-prone areas are determined by considering the wetness index maps of the watershed. As the second stage of this study, a hydraulic model, HEC-RAS, was executed to determine flood inundation areas under different return period-flood events. River network cross-sections required for this study were derived from highly detailed digital elevation models by QGIS. Also river hydraulic parameters were used in the hydraulic model. Modelling technology used in this study is made of freely available open source softwares. Based on case studies performed on watersheds in Turkey, it is concluded that results of such studies can be used for taking precaution measures against life and monetary losses due to floods in urban areas particularly.

  6. Hydrological and hydraulic models for determination of flood-prone and flood inundation areas

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    H. Aksoy

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available Geographic Information Systems (GIS are widely used in most studies on water resources. Especially, when the topography and geomorphology of study area are considered, GIS can ease the work load. Detailed data should be used in this kind of studies. Because of, either the complication of the models or the requirement of highly detailed data, model outputs can be obtained fast only with a good optimization. The aim in this study, firstly, is to determine flood-prone areas in a watershed by using a hydrological model considering two wetness indexes; the topographical wetness index, and the SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses wetness index. The wetness indexes were obtained in the Quantum GIS (QGIS software by using the Digital Elevation Model of the study area. Flood-prone areas are determined by considering the wetness index maps of the watershed. As the second stage of this study, a hydraulic model, HEC-RAS, was executed to determine flood inundation areas under different return period-flood events. River network cross-sections required for this study were derived from highly detailed digital elevation models by QGIS. Also river hydraulic parameters were used in the hydraulic model. Modelling technology used in this study is made of freely available open source softwares. Based on case studies performed on watersheds in Turkey, it is concluded that results of such studies can be used for taking precaution measures against life and monetary losses due to floods in urban areas particularly.

  7. Copilot: Monitoring Embedded Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pike, Lee; Wegmann, Nis; Niller, Sebastian; Goodloe, Alwyn

    2012-01-01

    Runtime verification (RV) is a natural fit for ultra-critical systems, where correctness is imperative. In ultra-critical systems, even if the software is fault-free, because of the inherent unreliability of commodity hardware and the adversity of operational environments, processing units (and their hosted software) are replicated, and fault-tolerant algorithms are used to compare the outputs. We investigate both software monitoring in distributed fault-tolerant systems, as well as implementing fault-tolerance mechanisms using RV techniques. We describe the Copilot language and compiler, specifically designed for generating monitors for distributed, hard real-time systems. We also describe two case-studies in which we generated Copilot monitors in avionics systems.

  8. Waste monitoring system for effluents

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Macdonald, J.M.; Gomez, B.; Trujillo, L.; Malcom, J.E.; Nekimken, H.; Pope, N.; Bibeau, R.

    1995-07-01

    The waste monitoring system in use at Los Alamos National Laboratory's Plutonium Facility, TA-55, is a computer-based system that proves real-time information on industrial effluents. Remote computers monitor discharge events and data moves from one system to another via a local area network. This report describes the history, system design, summary, instrumentation list, displays, trending screens, and layout of the waste monitoring system

  9. The Financial Benefit of Early Flood Warnings in Europe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pappenberger, Florian; Cloke, Hannah L.; Wetterhall, Fredrik; Parker, Dennis J.; Richardson, David; Thielen, Jutta

    2015-04-01

    Effective disaster risk management relies on science based solutions to close the gap between prevention and preparedness measures. The outcome of consultations on the UNIDSR post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction highlight the need for cross-border early warning systems to strengthen the preparedness phases of disaster risk management in order to save people's lives and property and reduce the overall impact of severe events. In particular, continental and global scale flood forecasting systems provide vital information to various decision makers with which early warnings of floods can be made. Here the potential monetary benefits of early flood warnings using the example of the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) are calculated based on pan-European Flood damage data and calculations of potential flood damage reductions. The benefits are of the order of 400 Euro for every 1 Euro invested. Because of the uncertainties which accompany the calculation, a large sensitivity analysis is performed in order to develop an envelope of possible financial benefits. Current EFAS system skill is compared against perfect forecasts to demonstrate the importance of further improving the skill of the forecasts. Improving the response to warnings is also essential in reaping the benefits of flood early warnings.

  10. Contribution of an exposure indicator to better anticipate damages with the AIGA flood warning method: a case study in the South of France

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saint-Martin, Clotilde; Fouchier, Catherine; Douvinet, Johnny; Javelle, Pierre; Vinet, Freddy

    2016-04-01

    On the 3rd October 2015, heavy localized precipitations have occurred in South Eastern France leading to major flash floods on the Mediterranean coast. The severity of those floods has caused 20 fatalities and important damage in almost 50 municipalities in the French administrative area of Alpes-Maritimes. The local recording rain gauges have shown how fast the event has happened: 156 mm of rain were recorded in Mandelieu-la-Napoule and 145 mm in Cannes within 2 hours. As the affected rivers are not monitored, no anticipation was possible from the authorities in charge of risk management. In this case, forecasting floods is indeed complex because of the small size of the watersheds which implies a reduced catchment response time. In order to cope with the need of issuing flood warnings on un-monitored small catchments, Irstea and Météo-France have developed an alternative warning system for ungauged basins called the AIGA method. AIGA is a flood warning system based on a simple distributed hydrological model run at a 1 km² resolution using real time radar rainfall information (Javelle, Demargne, Defrance, Pansu, & Arnaud, 2014). The flood warnings, produced every 15 minutes, result of the comparison of the real time runoff data produced by the model with statistical runoff values. AIGA is running in real time in the South of France, within the RHYTMME project (https://rhytmme.irstea.fr/). Work is on-going in order to offer a similar service for the whole French territory. More than 200 impacts of the 3rd October floods have been located using media, social networks and fieldwork. The first comparisons between these impacts and the AIGA warning levels computed for this event show several discrepancies. However, these latter discrepancies appear to be explained by the land-use. An indicator of the exposure of territories to flooding has thus been created to weight the levels of the AIGA hydrological warnings with the land-use of the area surrounding the streams

  11. Methodology for flood risk analysis for nuclear power plants

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wagner, D.P.; Casada, M.L.; Fussell, J.B.

    1984-01-01

    The methodology for flood risk analysis described here addresses the effects of a flood on nuclear power plant safety systems. Combining the results of this method with the probability of a flood allows the effects of flooding to be included in a probabilistic risk assessment. The five-step methodology includes accident sequence screening to focus the detailed analysis efforts on the accident sequences that are significantly affected by a flood event. The quantitative results include the flood's contribution to system failure probability, accident sequence occurrence frequency and consequence category occurrence frequency. The analysis can be added to existing risk assessments without a significant loss in efficiency. The results of two example applications show the usefulness of the methodology. Both examples rely on the Reactor Safety Study for the required risk assessment inputs and present changes in the Reactor Safety Study results as a function of flood probability

  12. Evaluation of internal flooding in a BWR

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shiu, K.; Papazoglou, I.A.; Sun, Y.H.; Anavim, E.; Ilberg, D.

    1985-01-01

    Flooding inside a nuclear power station is capable of concurrently disabling redundant safety systems. This paper presents the results of a recent review study performed on internally-generated floods inside a boiling water reactor (BWR) reactor building. The study evaluated the flood initiator frequency due to either maintenance or ruptures using Markovian models. A time phased event tree approach was adopted to quantify the core damage frequency based on the flood initiator frequency. It is found in the study that the contribution to the total core damage due to internal flooding events is not insignificant and is comparable to other transient contributors. The findings also indicate that the operator plays an important role in the prevention as well as the mitigation of a flooding event

  13. TOVS data analysis during the catastrophic floods of Bangladesh of 1987 and 1988 and Cyclone of 1985

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Choudhury, A.M.

    1990-08-01

    Bangladesh has witnessed catastrophic floods in recent years so much so that in 1988 two-thirds of the country was flooded. This had created a world-wide attention. NOAA AVHRR and LANDSAT TM data have been analyzed to monitor floods. TOVS data prior to flooding, have also been analyzed to find out the causes of abnormal rainfall in the catchment area, responsible for flooding. TOVS data of the cyclone of 25 May 1985 which hit Bangladesh have also been analyzed. Satellite imagery can be very effectively used in the early warning of floods and cyclones. (author). 4 refs

  14. An assessment of flood vulnerability on physical development along ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Mohammad

    Key words: Drainage channel, flood, risk assessment, vulnerability. INTRODUCTION ... hydraulic and other control structures.” The effects of floods are always ..... An application of Geographic Information System in mapping flood risk zones in ...

  15. Risk assessment of urban flood disaster in Jingdezhen City based on analytic hierarchy process and geographic information system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, D. C.; Huang, J.; Wang, H. M.; Wang, Z. Q.; Wang, W. Q.

    2017-08-01

    The research of urban flood risk assessment and management are of great academic and practical importance, which has become a widespread concern throughout the world. It’s significant to understand the spatial-temporal distribution of the flood risk before making the risk response measures. In this study, the urban region of Jingdezhen City is selected as the study area. The assessment indicators are selected from four aspects: disaster-causing factors, disaster-pregnant environment, disaster-bearing body and the prevention and mitigation ability, by consideration of the formation process of urban flood risk. And then, a small-scale flood disaster risk assessment model is developed based on Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) and Geographic Information System(GIS), and the spatial-temporal distribution of flood risk in Jingdezhen City is analysed. The results show that the risk decreases gradually from the centre line of Changjiang River to the surrounding, and the areas of high flood disaster risk is decreasing from 2010 to 2013 while the risk areas are more concentred. The flood risk of the areas along the Changjiang River is the largest, followed by the low-lying areas in Changjiang District. And the risk is also large in Zhushan District where the population, the industries and commerce are concentrated. The flood risk in the western part of Changjiang District and the north-eastern part of the study area is relatively low. The results can provide scientific support for flood control construction and land development planning in Jingdezhen City.

  16. Mechanisms of vegetation removal by floods on bars of a heavily managed gravel bed river (The Isere River, France)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jourdain, Camille; Belleudy, Philippe; Tal, Michal; Malavoi, Jean-René

    2016-04-01

    In natural alpine gravel bed rivers, floods and their associated bedload transport maintain channels active and free of mature woody vegetation. In managed rivers, where flood regime and sediment supply have been modified by hydroelectric infrastructures and sediment mining, river beds tend to stabilize. As a result, in the recent past, mature vegetation has established on gravel bars of many gravel bed rivers worldwide. This established vegetation increases the risk of flooding by decreasing flow velocity and increasing water levels. In addition, the associated reduction in availability of pioneer habitats characteristic of these environments typically degrades biodiversity. Managing hydrology in a way that would limit vegetation establishment on bars presents an interesting management option. In this context, our study aims at understanding the impacts of floods of varying magnitude on vegetation removal, and identifying and quantifying the underlying mechanisms. Our study site is the Isère River, a heavily managed gravel bed river flowing in the western part of the French Alps. We studied the impact of floods on sediment transport and vegetation survival at the bar scale through field monitoring from 2014 to 2015, focusing on young salicaceous vegetation (chains, and topographic surveys. Hourly water discharge was obtained from the national gauging network. The hydraulics of monitored floods was characterized using a combination of field measurements and 2D hydraulic modeling: water levels were measured with pressure sensors and Large Scale Particle Velocimetry was used to measure flow velocities. These data were used to calibrate 2D hydrodynamic model using TELEMAC2D. At the reach scale, removal of mature vegetation was assed using a series of historical aerial photographs between 2001 and 2015. Our monitoring period covered a series of floods with recurrence intervals of 2 to 4 times per year, as well as one large flood with a 10 year return period. Only the

  17. Floodplain-wide coupling of flooding and vegetation patterns in the Tonle Sap of the Mekong River

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arias, M. E.; Haberstroh, C.

    2017-12-01

    Floodplain vegetation is one of the prime drivers of ecosystem productivity, thus floodplain-wide monitoring is critical to ensure the well-being of these ecosystems and the important services they provide to riparian societies. Therefore, the objective of this presentation is to introduce a novel methodology to monitor long-term and large-scale patterns of rooted vegetation in seasonally inundated floodplains. We applied this methodology to an floodplain area of ac. 18,000 km2 in the Tonle Sap (Cambodia), a complex hydro-ecological system directly connected to the Mekong River. The overall hypothesis of this study is that floodplain vegetation condition is dictated by gradients of disturbance from the uplands and from the flood-pulse itself. We first demonstrate that spatial vegetation patterns represented by the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) during the dry season -when interference from cloud cover and partial inundation is minimal- correspond well to meaningful land use/land cover groups as well as canopy cover data collected in the field. Annual trends (2000-2016) in NDVI spatial distribution showed that the modality of dry season NDVI is largely governed by the magnitude of flooding in the antecedent hydrological year. Indeed, we found a significant relationship between flood duration -defined as the number of months annually a floodplain pixel remains flooded- and floodplain-wide NDVI. We also determined that ac. 115 km2 yr-1 of the highest quality vegetation, were replaced by fallow land during the period of study. This research has important insights on the main drivers of floodplain vegetation in the Tonle Sap, and the proposed methodology, using data from freely available worldwide satellite imagery (MODIS), promises to be an effective method to monitor ecosystem change in large floodplains across the world.

  18. Monitoring and research to describe geomorphic effects of the 2011 controlled flood on the Green River in the Canyon of Lodore, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado and Utah

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mueller, Erich R.; Grams, Paul E.; Schmidt, John C.; Hazel, Joseph E.; Kaplinski, Matt; Alexander, Jason A.; Kohl, Keith

    2014-01-01

    In 2011, a large magnitude flow release from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Wyoming and Utah, occurred in response to high snowpack in the middle Rocky Mountains. This was the third highest recorded discharge along the Green River downstream of Flaming Gorge Dam, Utah, since its initial closure in November 1962 and motivated a research effort to document effects of these flows on channel morphology and sedimentology at four long-term monitoring sites within the Canyon of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado and Utah. Data collected in September 2011 included raft-based bathymetric surveys, ground-based surveys of banks, channel cross sections and vegetation-plot locations, sand-bar stratigraphy, and painted rock recovery on gravel bars. As part of this surveying effort, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data were collected at benchmarks on the canyon rim and along the river corridor to establish a high-resolution survey control network. This survey control network allows for the collection of repeatable spatial and elevation data necessary for high accuracy geomorphic change detection. Nearly 10,000 ground survey points and more than 20,000 bathymetric points (at 1-meter resolution) were collected over a 5-day field campaign, allowing for the construction of reach-scale digital elevation models (DEMs). Additionally, we evaluated long-term geomorphic change at these sites using repeat topographic surveys of eight monumented cross sections at each of the four sites. Analysis of DEMs and channel cross sections show a spatially variable pattern of erosion and deposition, both within and between reaches. As much as 5 meters of scour occurred in pools downstream from flow constrictions, especially in channel segments where gravel bars were absent. By contrast, some channel cross sections were stable during the 2011 floods, and have shown almost no change in over a decade of monitoring. Partial mobility of gravel bars occurred, and although in some locations

  19. Association between Floods and Acute Cardiovascular Diseases: A Population-Based Cohort Study Using a Geographic Information System Approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vanasse, Alain; Cohen, Alan; Courteau, Josiane; Bergeron, Patrick; Dault, Roxanne; Gosselin, Pierre; Blais, Claudia; Bélanger, Diane; Rochette, Louis; Chebana, Fateh

    2016-01-28

    Floods represent a serious threat to human health beyond the immediate risk of drowning. There is few data on the potential link between floods and direct consequences on health such as on cardiovascular health. This study aimed to explore the impact of one of the worst floods in the history of Quebec, Canada on acute cardiovascular diseases (CVD). A cohort study with a time series design with multiple control groups was built with the adult population identified in the Quebec Integrated Chronic Disease Surveillance System. A geographic information system approach was used to define the study areas. Logistic regressions were performed to compare the occurrence of CVD between groups. The results showed a 25%-27% increase in the odds in the flooded population in spring 2011 when compared with the population in the same area in springs 2010 and 2012. Besides, an increase up to 69% was observed in individuals with a medical history of CVD. Despite interesting results, the association was not statistically significant. A possible explanation to this result can be that the population affected by the flood was probably too small to provide the statistical power to answer the question, and leaves open a substantial possibility for a real and large effect.

  20. Towards an Australian ensemble streamflow forecasting system for flood prediction and water management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bennett, J.; David, R. E.; Wang, Q.; Li, M.; Shrestha, D. L.

    2016-12-01

    Flood forecasting in Australia has historically relied on deterministic forecasting models run only when floods are imminent, with considerable forecaster input and interpretation. These now co-existed with a continually available 7-day streamflow forecasting service (also deterministic) aimed at operational water management applications such as environmental flow releases. The 7-day service is not optimised for flood prediction. We describe progress on developing a system for ensemble streamflow forecasting that is suitable for both flood prediction and water management applications. Precipitation uncertainty is handled through post-processing of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) output with a Bayesian rainfall post-processor (RPP). The RPP corrects biases, downscales NWP output, and produces reliable ensemble spread. Ensemble precipitation forecasts are used to force a semi-distributed conceptual rainfall-runoff model. Uncertainty in precipitation forecasts is insufficient to reliably describe streamflow forecast uncertainty, particularly at shorter lead-times. We characterise hydrological prediction uncertainty separately with a 4-stage error model. The error model relies on data transformation to ensure residuals are homoscedastic and symmetrically distributed. To ensure streamflow forecasts are accurate and reliable, the residuals are modelled using a mixture-Gaussian distribution with distinct parameters for the rising and falling limbs of the forecast hydrograph. In a case study of the Murray River in south-eastern Australia, we show ensemble predictions of floods generally have lower errors than deterministic forecasting methods. We also discuss some of the challenges in operationalising short-term ensemble streamflow forecasts in Australia, including meeting the needs for accurate predictions across all flow ranges and comparing forecasts generated by event and continuous hydrological models.

  1. Analysis of infrequent hydrologic events with regard to existing streamflow monitoring capabilities in White Oak Creek watershed

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Edgar, D.E.

    1978-10-01

    The quantity and concentration of radionuclides released to the environment by ORNL must be monitored continuously and accurately in order to ensure compliance with legal requirements established by Federal and state guidelines. Of the five streamflow monitoring stations located within White Oak Creek watershed, stations 3, 4, and 5 are of primary importance in quantifying the flux of water, sediment, and radionuclides through the drainage basin. Currently, the maximum measurable discharge at these three stations is 1.42 m 3 /sec (50 cfs), 0.54 m 3 /sec (19 cfs), and 4.25 m 3 /sec (150 cfs), respectively. Estimates of flood magnitude and frequency indicate that even small floods which are expected to recur often are significantly larger than the existing monitoring system can measure. Several independent studies have shown that most of the sediment transported from a watershed is carried by larger, less frequent streamflows which occur only a small percentage of the time. It also has been shown that certain radionuclides are transported in association with fluvial sediment. Thus, the flux of radionuclides, both in solution and associated with sediment, increases significantly during flood conditions. Estimates of peak discharges resulting from recent storms indicate that the drainage system has experienced variable flood conditions during the past few years for which no accurate and reliable records exist

  2. A seamless global hydrological monitoring and forecasting system for water resources assessment and hydrological hazard early warning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheffield, Justin; He, Xiaogang; Wood, Eric; Pan, Ming; Wanders, Niko; Zhan, Wang; Peng, Liqing

    2017-04-01

    Sustainable management of water resources and mitigation of the impacts of hydrological hazards are becoming ever more important at large scales because of inter-basin, inter-country and inter-continental connections in water dependent sectors. These include water resources management, food production, and energy production, whose needs must be weighed against the water needs of ecosystems and preservation of water resources for future generations. The strains on these connections are likely to increase with climate change and increasing demand from burgeoning populations and rapid development, with potential for conflict over water. At the same time, network connections may provide opportunities to alleviate pressures on water availability through more efficient use of resources such as trade in water dependent goods. A key constraint on understanding, monitoring and identifying solutions to increasing competition for water resources and hazard risk is the availability of hydrological data for monitoring and forecasting water resources and hazards. We present a global online system that provides continuous and consistent water products across time scales, from the historic instrumental period, to real-time monitoring, short-term and seasonal forecasts, and climate change projections. The system is intended to provide data and tools for analysis of historic hydrological variability and trends, water resources assessment, monitoring of evolving hazards and forecasts for early warning, and climate change scale projections of changes in water availability and extreme events. The system is particular useful for scientists and stakeholders interested in regions with less available in-situ data, and where forecasts have the potential to help decision making. The system is built on a database of high-resolution climate data from 1950 to present that merges available observational records with bias-corrected reanalysis and satellite data, which then drives a coupled land

  3. Technical Note: Advances in flash flood monitoring using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. T. Perks

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs have the potential to capture information about the earth's surface in dangerous and previously inaccessible locations. Through image acquisition of flash flood events and subsequent object-based analysis, highly dynamic and oft-immeasurable hydraulic phenomena may be quantified at previously unattainable spatial and temporal resolutions. The potential for this approach to provide valuable information about the hydraulic conditions present during dynamic, high-energy flash floods has until now not been explored. In this paper we adopt a novel approach, utilizing the Kande–Lucas–Tomasi (KLT algorithm to track features present on the water surface which are related to the free-surface velocity. Following the successful tracking of features, a method analogous to the vector correction method has enabled accurate geometric rectification of velocity vectors. Uncertainties associated with the rectification process induced by unsteady camera movements are subsequently explored. Geo-registration errors are relatively stable and occur as a result of persistent residual distortion effects following image correction. The apparent ground movement of immobile control points between measurement intervals ranges from 0.05 to 0.13 m. The application of this approach to assess the hydraulic conditions present in the Alyth Burn, Scotland, during a 1 : 200 year flash flood resulted in the generation of an average 4.2 at a rate of 508 measurements s−1. Analysis of these vectors provides a rare insight into the complexity of channel–overbank interactions during flash floods. The uncertainty attached to the calculated velocities is relatively low, with a spatial average across the area of ±0.15 m s−1. Little difference is observed in the uncertainty attached to out-of-bank velocities (±0.15 m s−1, and within-channel velocities (±0.16 m s−1, illustrating the consistency of the approach.

  4. Radiation monitoring methodologies and their applications at BARC site

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Divkar, J.K.; Chatterjee, M.K.; Patra, R.P; Morali, S.; Singh, Rajvir

    2016-01-01

    Radiation monitoring methodology can be planned for various objectives during normal as well as emergency situations. During radiological emergency, radiation monitoring data provides useful information required for management of the abnormal situation. In order to assess the possible consequences accurately and to implement adequate measure, the emergency management authorities should have a well-prepared monitoring strategy in readiness. Fixed monitoring method is useful to analyze the behavior of nuclear plant site and to develop holistic model for it mobile monitoring is useful for quick impact assessment and will be the backbone of emergency response, particularly in case of non availability of fixed monitoring system caused due to natural disaster like floods, earthquake and tsunami

  5. Solid transport in mountain rivers: monitoring techniques and long term assessment as flood prevention tools

    Science.gov (United States)

    Longoni, Laura; Brambilla, Davide; Ivanov, Vladislav; Messa, Giacomo; Veronelli, Andrea; Radice, Alessio; Papini, Monica

    2017-04-01

    Floods are calamitous phenomena with an ever-increasing frequency around the globe, that often result in socio-economic damage and casualties. The role of the solid fraction in the river dynamic has been widely debated in the last decade and its importance is recognized as critical and not negligible in flood simulations as it has been evidenced that the severity of an event is often the result of the coupling of a flood wave with elevated solid transport rates. Nevertheless, assessing the quantity of sediment mobilized in a particular event is not feasible without a long term analysis of the river's dynamics and its morphological evolution since it is defined by past events. This work is focused on the techniques to improve knowledge about sediment production and transport through hydrological networks as a necessary component of a wise flood prevention planning. In particular, a multidisciplinary approach that combines hydraulic and geological knowledge is required in order to understand the evolution of the river sediment and how it will influence the following critical event. The methods are presented through a case study in Italy where a series of different approaches have been integrated to gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem: the sediment movement has been studied by a Eulerian as well as a Lagrangian approaches while hydraulic properties of the stream have been measured. The research started with an attempt to monitor sediment movements: in June 2016 300 sample pebbles, equipped with RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) transponders, have been deployed in the river and tracked after every major rainfall event. The obtained data-set has been combined with a morphological analysis and a river flow discharge computed through PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) method in order to identify the relation between a given rainfall event and sediment transport. Moreover, critical sediment size has been estimated from field data using three approaches: two

  6. Two-dimensional Model of Ciliwung River Flood in DKI Jakarta for Development of the Regional Flood Index Map

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adam Formánek

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available The objective of this study was to present a sophisticated method of developing supporting material for flood control implementation in DKI Jakarta. High flow rates in the Ciliwung River flowing through Jakarta regularly causes extensive flooding in the rainy season. The affected area comprises highly densely populated villages. For developing an efficient early warning system in view of decreasing the vulnerability of the locations a flood index map has to be available. This study analyses the development of a flood risk map of the inundation area based on a two-dimensional modeling using FESWMS. The reference event used for the model was the most recent significant flood in 2007. The resulting solution represents flood characteristics such as inundation area, inundation depth and flow velocity. Model verification was performed by confrontation of the results with survey data. The model solution was overlaid with a street map of Jakarta. Finally, alternatives for flood mitigation measures are discussed.

  7. Time-dependent reliability analysis of flood defences

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Buijs, F.A.; Hall, J.W.; Sayers, P.B.; Gelder, P.H.A.J.M. van

    2009-01-01

    This paper describes the underlying theory and a practical process for establishing time-dependent reliability models for components in a realistic and complex flood defence system. Though time-dependent reliability models have been applied frequently in, for example, the offshore, structural safety and nuclear industry, application in the safety-critical field of flood defence has to date been limited. The modelling methodology involves identifying relevant variables and processes, characterisation of those processes in appropriate mathematical terms, numerical implementation, parameter estimation and prediction. A combination of stochastic, hierarchical and parametric processes is employed. The approach is demonstrated for selected deterioration mechanisms in the context of a flood defence system. The paper demonstrates that this structured methodology enables the definition of credible statistical models for time-dependence of flood defences in data scarce situations. In the application of those models one of the main findings is that the time variability in the deterioration process tends to be governed the time-dependence of one or a small number of critical attributes. It is demonstrated how the need for further data collection depends upon the relevance of the time-dependence in the performance of the flood defence system.

  8. Application of the Unbounded Probability Distribution of the Johnson System for Floods Estimation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Campos-Aranda Daniel Francisco

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Floods designs constitute a key to estimate the sizing of new water works and to review the hydrological security of existing ones. The most reliable method for estimating their magnitudes associated with certain return periods is to fit a probabilistic model to available records of maximum annual flows. Since such model is at first unknown, several models need to be tested in order to select the most appropriate one according to an arbitrary statistical index, commonly the standard error of fit. Several probability distributions have shown versatility and consistency of results when processing floods records and therefore, its application has been established as a norm or precept. The Johnson System has three families of distributions, one of which is the Log–Normal model with three parameters of fit, which is also the border between the bounded distributions and those with no upper limit. These families of distributions have four adjustment parameters and converge to the standard normal distribution, so that their predictions are obtained with such a model. Having contrasted the three probability distributions established by precept in 31 historical records of hydrological events, the Johnson system is applied to such data. The results of the unbounded distribution of the Johnson system (SJU are compared to the optimal results from the three distributions. It was found that the predictions of the SJU distribution are similar to those obtained with the other models in the low return periods ( 1000 years. Because of its theoretical support, the SJU model is recommended in flood estimation.

  9. Mapping flood and flooding potential indices: a methodological approach to identifying areas susceptible to flood and flooding risk. Case study: the Prahova catchment (Romania)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zaharia, Liliana; Costache, Romulus; Prăvălie, Remus; Ioana-Toroimac, Gabriela

    2017-04-01

    Given that floods continue to cause yearly significant worldwide human and material damages, flood risk mitigation is a key issue and a permanent challenge in developing policies and strategies at various spatial scales. Therefore, a basic phase is elaborating hazard and flood risk maps, documents which are an essential support for flood risk management. The aim of this paper is to develop an approach that allows for the identification of flash-flood and flood-prone susceptible areas based on computing and mapping of two indices: FFPI (Flash-Flood Potential Index) and FPI (Flooding Potential Index). These indices are obtained by integrating in a GIS environment several geographical variables which control runoff (in the case of the FFPI) and favour flooding (in the case of the FPI). The methodology was applied in the upper (mountainous) and middle (hilly) catchment of the Prahova River, a densely populated and socioeconomically well-developed area which has been affected repeatedly by water-related hazards over the past decades. The resulting maps showing the spatialization of the FFPI and FPI allow for the identification of areas with high susceptibility to flashfloods and flooding. This approach can provide useful mapped information, especially for areas (generally large) where there are no flood/hazard risk maps. Moreover, the FFPI and FPI maps can constitute a preliminary step for flood risk and vulnerability assessment.

  10. On the monitoring and prediction of flash floods in small and medium-sized catchments - the EXTRUSO project

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wiemann, Stefan; Eltner, Anette; Sardemann, Hannes; Spieler, Diana; Singer, Thomas; Thanh Luong, Thi; Janabi, Firas Al; Schütze, Niels; Bernard, Lars; Bernhofer, Christian; Maas, Hans-Gerd

    2017-04-01

    Flash floods regularly cause severe socio-economic damage worldwide. In parallel, climate change is very likely to increase the number of such events, due to an increasing frequency of extreme precipitation events (EASAC 2013). Whereas recent work primarily addresses the resilience of large catchment areas, the major impact of hydro-meteorological extremes caused by heavy precipitation is on small areas. Those are very difficult to observe and predict, due to sparse monitoring networks and only few means for hydro-meteorological modelling, especially in small catchment areas. The objective of the EXTRUSO project is to identify and implement appropriate means to close this gap by an interdisciplinary approach, combining comprehensive research expertise from meteorology, hydrology, photogrammetry and geoinformatics. The project targets innovative techniques for achieving spatio-temporal densified monitoring and simulations for the analysis, prediction and warning of local hydro-meteorological extreme events. The following four aspects are of particular interest: 1. The monitoring, analysis and combination of relevant hydro-meteorological parameters from various sources, including existing monitoring networks, ground radar, specific low-cost sensors and crowdsourcing. 2. The determination of relevant hydro-morphological parameters from different photogrammetric sensors (e.g. camera, laser scanner) and sensor platforms (e.g. UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and UWV (unmanned water vehicle)). 3. The continuous hydro-meteorological modelling of precipitation, soil moisture and water flows by means of conceptual and data-driven modelling. 4. The development of a collaborative, web-based service infrastructure as an information and communication point, especially in the case of an extreme event. There are three major applications for the planned information system: First, the warning of local extreme events for the population in potentially affected areas, second, the support

  11. Exploitation of Documented Historical Floods for Achieving Better Flood Defense

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Slobodan Kolaković

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Establishing Base Flood Elevation for a stream network corresponding to a big catchment is feasible by interdisciplinary approach, involving stochastic hydrology, river hydraulics, and computer aided simulations. A numerical model calibrated by historical floods has been exploited in this study. The short presentation of the catchment of the Tisza River in this paper is followed by the overview of historical floods which hit the region in the documented period of 130 years. Several well documented historical floods provided opportunity for the calibration of the chosen numerical model. Once established, the model could be used for investigation of different extreme flood scenarios and to establish the Base Flood Elevation. The calibration has shown that the coefficient of friction in case of the Tisza River is dependent both on the actual water level and on the preceding flood events. The effect of flood plain maintenance as well as the activation of six potential detention ponds on flood mitigation has been examined. Furthermore, the expected maximum water levels have also been determined for the case if the ever observed biggest 1888 flood hit the region again. The investigated cases of flood superposition highlighted the impact of tributary Maros on flood mitigation along the Tisza River.

  12. Mapping Daily and Maximum Flood Extents at 90-m Resolution During Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Using Passive Microwave Remote Sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galantowicz, J. F.; Picton, J.; Root, B.

    2017-12-01

    Passive microwave remote sensing can provided a distinct perspective on flood events by virtue of wide sensor fields of view, frequent observations from multiple satellites, and sensitivity through clouds and vegetation. During Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, we used AMSR2 (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2, JAXA) data to map flood extents starting from the first post-storm rain-free sensor passes. Our standard flood mapping algorithm (FloodScan) derives flooded fraction from 22-km microwave data (AMSR2 or NASA's GMI) in near real time and downscales it to 90-m resolution using a database built from topography, hydrology, and Global Surface Water Explorer data and normalized to microwave data footprint shapes. During Harvey and Irma we tested experimental versions of the algorithm designed to map the maximum post-storm flood extent rapidly and made a variety of map products available immediately for use in storm monitoring and response. The maps have several unique features including spanning the entire storm-affected area and providing multiple post-storm updates as flood water shifted and receded. From the daily maps we derived secondary products such as flood duration, maximum flood extent (Figure 1), and flood depth. In this presentation, we describe flood extent evolution, maximum extent, and local details as detected by the FloodScan algorithm in the wake of Harvey and Irma. We compare FloodScan results to other available flood mapping resources, note observed shortcomings, and describe improvements made in response. We also discuss how best-estimate maps could be updated in near real time by merging FloodScan products and data from other remote sensing systems and hydrological models.

  13. VME system monitor board

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    1996-02-01

    Much of the machinery throughout the APS will be controlled by VME based computers. In order to increase the reliability of the system, it is necessary to be able to monitor the status of each VME crate. In order to do this, a VME System Monitor was created. In addition to being able to monitor and report the status (watchdog timer, temperature, CPU (Motorola MVME 167) state (status, run, fail), and the power supply), it includes provisions to remotely reset the CPU and VME crate, digital I/O, and parts of the transition module (serial port and ethernet connector) so that the Motorla MVME 712 is not needed. The standard VME interface was modified on the System Monitor so that in conjunction with the Motorola MVME 167 a message based VXI interrupt handler could is implemented. The System Monitor is a single VME card (6U). It utilizes both the front panel and the P2 connector for I/O. The front panel contains a temperature monitor, watchdog status LED, 4 general status LEDs, input for a TTL interrupt, 8 binary inputs (24 volt, 5 volt, and dry contact sense), 4 binary outputs (dry contact, TTL, and 100 mA), serial port (electrical RS-232 or fiber optic), ethernet transceiver (10 BASE-FO or AUI), and a status link to neighbor crates. The P2 connector is used to provide the serial port and ethernet to the processor. In order to abort and read the status of the CPU, a jumper cable must be connected between the CPU and the System Monitor.

  14. Flood susceptibility mapping using novel ensembles of adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system and metaheuristic algorithms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Razavi Termeh, Seyed Vahid; Kornejady, Aiding; Pourghasemi, Hamid Reza; Keesstra, Saskia

    2018-02-15

    Flood is one of the most destructive natural disasters which cause great financial and life losses per year. Therefore, producing susceptibility maps for flood management are necessary in order to reduce its harmful effects. The aim of the present study is to map flood hazard over the Jahrom Township in Fars Province using a combination of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) with different metaheuristics algorithms such as ant colony optimization (ACO), genetic algorithm (GA), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) and comparing their accuracy. A total number of 53 flood locations areas were identified, 35 locations of which were randomly selected in order to model flood susceptibility and the remaining 16 locations were used to validate the models. Learning vector quantization (LVQ), as one of the supervised neural network methods, was employed in order to estimate factors' importance. Nine flood conditioning factors namely: slope degree, plan curvature, altitude, topographic wetness index (TWI), stream power index (SPI), distance from river, land use/land cover, rainfall, and lithology were selected and the corresponding maps were prepared in ArcGIS. The frequency ratio (FR) model was used to assign weights to each class within particular controlling factor, then the weights was transferred into MATLAB software for further analyses and to combine with metaheuristic models. The ANFIS-PSO was found to be the most practical model in term of producing the highly focused flood susceptibility map with lesser spatial distribution related to highly susceptible classes. The chi-square result attests the same, where the ANFIS-PSO had the highest spatial differentiation within flood susceptibility classes over the study area. The area under the curve (AUC) obtained from ROC curve indicated the accuracy of 91.4%, 91.8%, 92.6% and 94.5% for the respective models of FR, ANFIS-ACO, ANFIS-GA, and ANFIS-PSO ensembles. So, the ensemble of ANFIS-PSO was introduced as the

  15. Combining hydraulic model, hydrogeomorphological observations and chemical analyses of surface waters to improve knowledge on karst flash floods genesis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    F. Raynaud

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available During a flood event over a karst watershed, the connections between surface and ground waters appear to be complex ones. The karst may attenuate surface floods by absorbing water or contribute to the surface flood by direct contribution of karst waters in the rivers (perennial and overflowing springs and by diffuse resurgence along the hillslopes. If it is possible to monitor each known outlet of a karst system, the diffuse contribution is yet difficult to assess. Furthermore, all these connections vary over time according to several factors such as the water content of the soil and underground, the rainfall characteristics, the runoff pathways. Therefore, the contribution of each compartment is generally difficult to assess, and flood dynamics are not fully understood. To face these misunderstandings and difficulties, we analysed surface waters during six recent flood events in the Lirou watershed (a karst tributary of the Lez, in South of France. Because of the specific chemical signature of karst waters, chemical analyses can supply information about water pathways and flood dynamics. Then, we used the dilution law to combine chemical results, flow data and field observations to assess the dynamics of the karst component of the flood. To end, we discussed the surface or karst origin of the waters responsible for the apparent runoff coefficient rise during flash karst flood.

  16. Flood Forecasting Based on TIGGE Precipitation Ensemble Forecast

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jinyin Ye

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available TIGGE (THORPEX International Grand Global Ensemble was a major part of the THORPEX (Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment. It integrates ensemble precipitation products from all the major forecast centers in the world and provides systematic evaluation on the multimodel ensemble prediction system. Development of meteorologic-hydrologic coupled flood forecasting model and early warning model based on the TIGGE precipitation ensemble forecast can provide flood probability forecast, extend the lead time of the flood forecast, and gain more time for decision-makers to make the right decision. In this study, precipitation ensemble forecast products from ECMWF, NCEP, and CMA are used to drive distributed hydrologic model TOPX. We focus on Yi River catchment and aim to build a flood forecast and early warning system. The results show that the meteorologic-hydrologic coupled model can satisfactorily predict the flow-process of four flood events. The predicted occurrence time of peak discharges is close to the observations. However, the magnitude of the peak discharges is significantly different due to various performances of the ensemble prediction systems. The coupled forecasting model can accurately predict occurrence of the peak time and the corresponding risk probability of peak discharge based on the probability distribution of peak time and flood warning, which can provide users a strong theoretical foundation and valuable information as a promising new approach.

  17. Knowledge Discovery, Integration and Communication for Extreme Weather and Flood Resilience Using Artificial Intelligence: Flood AI Alpha

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, I.; Sermet, M. Y.

    2016-12-01

    Nobody is immune from extreme events or natural hazards that can lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and public. One of the solutions to reduce the impacts of extreme events is to invest in improving resilience with the ability to better prepare, plan, recover, and adapt to disasters. The National Research Council (NRC) report discusses the topic of how to increase resilience to extreme events through a vision of resilient nation in the year 2030. The report highlights the importance of data, information, gaps and knowledge challenges that needs to be addressed, and suggests every individual to access the risk and vulnerability information to make their communities more resilient. This abstracts presents our project on developing a resilience framework for flooding to improve societal preparedness with objectives; (a) develop a generalized ontology for extreme events with primary focus on flooding; (b) develop a knowledge engine with voice recognition, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and inference engine. The knowledge engine will utilize the flood ontology and concepts to connect user input to relevant knowledge discovery outputs on flooding; (c) develop a data acquisition and processing framework from existing environmental observations, forecast models, and social networks. The system will utilize the framework, capabilities and user base of the Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) to populate and test the system; (d) develop a communication framework to support user interaction and delivery of information to users. The interaction and delivery channels will include voice and text input via web-based system (e.g. IFIS), agent-based bots (e.g. Microsoft Skype, Facebook Messenger), smartphone and augmented reality applications (e.g. smart assistant), and automated web workflows (e.g. IFTTT, CloudWork) to open the knowledge discovery for flooding to thousands of community extensible web workflows.

  18. Modeling urban coastal flood severity from crowd-sourced flood reports using Poisson regression and Random Forest

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sadler, J. M.; Goodall, J. L.; Morsy, M. M.; Spencer, K.

    2018-04-01

    Sea level rise has already caused more frequent and severe coastal flooding and this trend will likely continue. Flood prediction is an essential part of a coastal city's capacity to adapt to and mitigate this growing problem. Complex coastal urban hydrological systems however, do not always lend themselves easily to physically-based flood prediction approaches. This paper presents a method for using a data-driven approach to estimate flood severity in an urban coastal setting using crowd-sourced data, a non-traditional but growing data source, along with environmental observation data. Two data-driven models, Poisson regression and Random Forest regression, are trained to predict the number of flood reports per storm event as a proxy for flood severity, given extensive environmental data (i.e., rainfall, tide, groundwater table level, and wind conditions) as input. The method is demonstrated using data from Norfolk, Virginia USA from September 2010 to October 2016. Quality-controlled, crowd-sourced street flooding reports ranging from 1 to 159 per storm event for 45 storm events are used to train and evaluate the models. Random Forest performed better than Poisson regression at predicting the number of flood reports and had a lower false negative rate. From the Random Forest model, total cumulative rainfall was by far the most dominant input variable in predicting flood severity, followed by low tide and lower low tide. These methods serve as a first step toward using data-driven methods for spatially and temporally detailed coastal urban flood prediction.

  19. Environmental monitoring and information systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gibbert, R.

    1998-01-01

    Environmental monitoring and information systems installed by Dornier are summarized. A broad spectrum of environmental areas from air quality and water to radioactivity is covered. Nuclear power plant monitoring systems, either as remote or plant-internal monitoring systems, form an important element of the work undertaken. The systems delivered covered local, regional or national areas. The range of services provided, and hardware and software platforms are listed. (R.P.)

  20. Public perception of flood risks, flood forecasting and mitigation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Brilly

    2005-01-01

    Full Text Available A multidisciplinary and integrated approach to the flood mitigation decision making process should provide the best response of society in a flood hazard situation including preparation works and post hazard mitigation. In Slovenia, there is a great lack of data on social aspects and public response to flood mitigation measures and information management. In this paper, two studies of flood perception in the Slovenian town Celje are represented. During its history, Celje was often exposed to floods, the most recent serious floods being in 1990 and in 1998, with a hundred and fifty return period and more than ten year return period, respectively. Two surveys were conducted in 1997 and 2003, with 157 participants from different areas of the town in the first, and 208 in the second study, aiming at finding the general attitude toward the floods. The surveys revealed that floods present a serious threat in the eyes of the inhabitants, and that the perception of threat depends, to a certain degree, on the place of residence. The surveys also highlighted, among the other measures, solidarity and the importance of insurance against floods.

  1. An inkjet-printed buoyant 3-D lagrangian sensor for real-time flood monitoring

    KAUST Repository

    Farooqui, Muhammad Fahad

    2014-06-01

    A 3-D (cube-shaped) Lagrangian sensor, inkjet printed on a paper substrate, is presented for the first time. The sensor comprises a transmitter chip with a microcontroller completely embedded in the cube, along with a $1.5 \\\\lambda 0 dipole that is uniquely implemented on all the faces of the cube to achieve a near isotropic radiation pattern. The sensor has been designed to operate both in the air as well as water (half immersed) for real-time flood monitoring. The sensor weighs 1.8 gm and measures 13 mm$\\\\,\\\\times\\\\,$ 13 mm$\\\\,\\\\times\\\\,$ 13 mm, and each side of the cube corresponds to only $0.1 \\\\lambda 0 (at 2.4 GHz). The printed circuit board is also inkjet-printed on paper substrate to make the sensor light weight and buoyant. Issues related to the bending of inkjet-printed tracks and integration of the transmitter chip in the cube are discussed. The Lagrangian sensor is designed to operate in a wireless sensor network and field tests have confirmed that it can communicate up to a distance of 100 m while in the air and up to 50 m while half immersed in water. © 1963-2012 IEEE.

  2. Data monitoring system of technical diagnosis system for EAST

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Qian Jing; Weng Peide; Chen Zhuomin; Wu Yu; Xi Weibin; Luo Jiarong

    2010-01-01

    Technical diagnosis system (TDS) is an important subsystem to monitor status parameters of EAST (experimental advanced superconducting tokamak). The upgraded TDS data monitoring system is comprised of management floor, monitoring floor and field floor.. Security protection, malfunction record and analysis are designed to make the system stable, robust and friendly. During the past EAST campaigns, the data monitoring system has been operated reliably and stably. The signal conditioning system and software architecture are described. (authors)

  3. Added value of online satellite data transmission for flood forecasting: warning systems in medium-size catchments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruch, C; Stadler, H

    2009-01-01

    The present paper deals with the implementation of online data transferred via LEO satellite communication in a flood forecasting system. Although the project is ongoing, it is already recognised that the information chain: "measurement-transmission-forecast-alert" can be shortened, i.e., the flood danger can be more rapidly communicated to the population at risk. This gain is particularly valuable for medium size catchments where the concentration time (basin time of response to rainfall) is short.

  4. The JOYO remote monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Damico, Joseph P.; Hashimoto, Yu

    2000-01-01

    The evolution of the personal computer, operating systems and applications software and the Internet has brought drastic change and many benefits worldwide. Remote monitoring systems benefit from computer network and other modern software technologies. The availability of fast, inexpensive and secure communications enables new solutions for monitoring system applications. The JOYO Remote Monitoring System (RMS) utilizes computer network communications and modular software design to provide a distributed integrated solution for monitoring multiple storage locations. This paper describes the remote monitoring system installed at the JOYO Fast Reactor. The system combines sensors, software, and computer network technologies to create a powerful data collection, storage and dissemination capability. The RMS provides a flexible, scalable solution for a variety of applications. The RMS integrates a variety of state of the art technologies from several sources and serves as a test bed for cutting edge technologies that can be shared with outside users. This paper describes the system components and their operation and discusses system benefits. Current activities and future plants for the JOYO RMS will be discussed. (author)

  5. Understanding processes that generate flash floods in the arid Judean Desert to the Dead Sea - a measurement network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hennig, Hanna; Rödiger, Tino; Laronne, Jonathan B.; Geyer, Stefan; Merz, Ralf

    2016-04-01

    Flash floods in (semi-) arid regions are fascinating in their suddenness and can be harmful for humans, infrastructure, industry and tourism. Generated within minutes, an early warning system is essential. A hydrological model is required to quantify flash floods. Current models to predict flash floods are often based on simplified concepts and/or on concepts which were developed for humid regions. To more closely relate such models to local conditions, processes within catchments where flash floods occur require consideration. In this study we present a monitoring approach to decipher different flash flood generating processes in the ephemeral Wadi Arugot on the western side of the Dead Sea. To understand rainfall input a dense rain gauge network was installed. Locations of rain gauges were chosen based on land use, slope and soil cover. The spatiotemporal variation of rain intensity will also be available from radar backscatter. Level pressure sensors located at the outlet of major tributaries have been deployed to analyze in which part of the catchment water is generated. To identify the importance of soil moisture preconditions, two cosmic ray sensors have been deployed. At the outlet of the Arugot water is sampled and level is monitored. To more accurately determine water discharge, water velocity is measured using portable radar velocimetry. A first analysis of flash flood processes will be presented following the FLEX-Topo concept .(Savenije, 2010), where each landscape type is represented using an individual hydrological model according to the processes within the three hydrological response units: plateau, desert and outlet. References: Savenije, H. H. G.: HESS Opinions "Topography driven conceptual modelling (FLEX-Topo)", Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 14, 2681-2692, doi:10.5194/hess-14-2681-2010, 2010.

  6. Emotional engagement with participatory simulations as a tool for learning and decision-support for coupled human-natural systems: Flood hazards and urban development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gilligan, J. M.; Corey, B.; Camp, J. V.; John, N. J.; Sengupta, P.

    2015-12-01

    The complex interactions between land use and natural hazards pose serious challenges in education, research, and public policy. Where complex nonlinear interactions produce unintuitive results, interactive computer simulations can be useful tools for education and decision support. Emotions play important roles in cognition and learning, especially where risks are concerned. Interactive simulations have the potential to harness emotional engagement to enhance learning and understanding of risks in coupled human-natural systems. We developed a participatory agent-based simulation of cities at risk of river flooding. Participants play the role of managers of neighboring cities along a flood-prone river and make choices about building flood walls to protect their inhabitants. Simulated agents participate in dynamic real estate markets in which demand for property, and thus values and decisions to build, respond to experience with flooding over time. By reducing high-frequency low-magnitude flooding, flood walls may stimulate development, thus increasing tax revenues but also increasing vulnerability to uncommon floods that overtop the walls. Flood waves are launched stochastically and propagate downstream. Flood walls that restrict overbank flow at one city can increase the amplitude of a flood wave at neighboring cities, both up and downstream. We conducted a pilot experiment with a group of three pre-service teachers. The subjects successfully learned key concepts of risk tradeoffs and unintended consequences that can accompany flood-control measures. We also observed strong emotional responses, including hope, fear, and sense of loss. This emotional engagement with a model of coupled human-natural systems was very different from previous experiments on participatory simulations of purely natural systems for physics pedagogy. We conducted a second session in which the participants were expert engineers. We will present the results of these experiments and the

  7. Unattended Monitoring System Design Methodology

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Drayer, D.D.; DeLand, S.M.; Harmon, C.D.; Matter, J.C.; Martinez, R.L.; Smith, J.D.

    1999-01-01

    A methodology for designing Unattended Monitoring Systems starting at a systems level has been developed at Sandia National Laboratories. This proven methodology provides a template that describes the process for selecting and applying appropriate technologies to meet unattended system requirements, as well as providing a framework for development of both training courses and workshops associated with unattended monitoring. The design and implementation of unattended monitoring systems is generally intended to respond to some form of policy based requirements resulting from international agreements or domestic regulations. Once the monitoring requirements are established, a review of the associated process and its related facilities enables identification of strategic monitoring locations and development of a conceptual system design. The detailed design effort results in the definition of detection components as well as the supporting communications network and data management scheme. The data analyses then enables a coherent display of the knowledge generated during the monitoring effort. The resultant knowledge is then compared to the original system objectives to ensure that the design adequately addresses the fundamental principles stated in the policy agreements. Implementation of this design methodology will ensure that comprehensive unattended monitoring system designs provide appropriate answers to those critical questions imposed by specific agreements or regulations. This paper describes the main features of the methodology and discusses how it can be applied in real world situations

  8. Sinkhole flooding in Murfreesboro, Rutherford County, Tennessee, 2001-02

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bradley, Michael W.; Hileman, Gregg Edward

    2006-01-01

    The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, conducted an investigation from January 2001 through April 2002 to delineate sinkholes and sinkhole watersheds in the Murfreesboro area and to characterize the hydrologic response of sinkholes to major rainfall events. Terrain analysis was used to define sinkholes and delineate the sinkhole drainage areas. Flooding in 78 sinkholes in three focus areas was identified and tracked using aerial photography following three major storms in February 2001, January 2002, and March 2002. The three focus areas are located to the east, north, and northwest of Murfreesboro and are underlain primarily by the Ridley Limestone with some outcrops of the underlying Pierce Limestone. The observed sinkhole flooding is controlled by water inflow, water outflow, and the degree of the hydraulic connection (connectivity) to a ground-water conduit system. The observed sinkholes in the focus areas are grouped into three categories based on the sinkhole morphology and the connectivity to the ground-water system as indicated by their response to flooding. The three types of sinkholes described for these focus areas are pan sinkholes with low connectivity, deep sinkholes with high connectivity, and deep sinkholes with low connectivity to the ground-water conduit system. Shallow, broad pan sinkholes flood as water inflow from a storm inundates the depression at land surface. Water overflow from one pan sinkhole can flow downgradient and become inflow to a sinkhole at a lower altitude. Land-surface modifications that direct more water into a pan sinkhole could increase peak-flood altitudes and extend flood durations. Land-surface modifications that increase the outflow by overland drainage could decrease the flood durations. Road construction or alterations that reduce flow within or between pan sinkholes could result in increased flood durations. Flood levels and durations in the deeper sinkholes observed in

  9. Analysis of the Tonle Sap Flood Pulse Based on Remote Sensing: how much does Tonle Sap Lake Affect the Mekong River Flood?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qu, W.; Hu, N.; Fu, J.; Lu, J.; Lu, H.; Lei, T.; Pang, Z.; Li, X.; Li, L.

    2018-04-01

    The economic value of the Tonle Sap Lake Floodplain to Cambodia is among the highest provided to a nation by a single ecosystem around the world. The flow of Mekong River is the primary factor affecting the Tonle Sap Lake Floodplain. The Tonle Sap Lake also plays a very important role in regulating the downstream flood of Mekong River. Hence, it is necessary to understand its temporal changes of lake surface and water storage and to analyse its relation with the flood processes of Mekong River. Monthly lake surface and water storage from July 2013 to May 2014 were first monitored based on remote sensing data. The relationship between water surface and accumulative water storage change was then established. In combination with hydrological modelling results of Mekong River Basin, the relation between the lake's water storage and the runoff of Mekong River was analysed. It is found that the water storage has a sharp increase from September to December and, after reaching its maximum in December, water storage quickly decreases with a 38.8 billion m3 of drop in only half month time from December to January, while it keeps rather stable at a lower level in other months. There is a two months' time lag between the maximum lake water storage and the Mekong River peak flood, which shows the lake's huge flood regulation role to downstream Mekong River. It shows that this remote sensing approach is feasible and reliable in quantitative monitoring of data scarce lakes.

  10. Savannah River Plant remote environmental monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schubert, J.F.

    1987-01-01

    The SRP remote environmental monitoring system consists of separations facilities stack monitors, production reactor stack monitors, twelve site perimeter monitors, river and stream monitors, a geostationary operational environmental satellite (GOES) data link, reactor cooling lake thermal monitors, meteorological tower system, Weather Information and Display (WIND) system computer, and the VANTAGE data base management system. The remote environmental monitoring system when fully implemented will provide automatic monitoring of key stack releases and automatic inclusion of these source terms in the emergency response codes

  11. Flood risk analysis procedure for nuclear power plants

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wagner, D.P.

    1982-01-01

    This paper describes a methodology and procedure for determining the impact of floods on nuclear power plant risk. The procedures are based on techniques of fault tree and event tree analysis and use the logic of these techniques to determine the effects of a flood on system failure probability and accident sequence occurrence frequency. The methodology can be applied independently or as an add-on analysis for an existing risk assessment. Each stage of the analysis yields useful results such as the critical flood level, failure flood level, and the flood's contribution to accident sequence occurrence frequency. The results of applications show the effects of floods on the risk from nuclear power plants analyzed in the Reactor Safety Study

  12. Dynamic building risk assessment theoretic model for rainstorm-flood utilization ABM and ABS

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lai, Wenze; Li, Wenbo; Wang, Hailei; Huang, Yingliang; Wu, Xuelian; Sun, Bingyun

    2015-12-01

    Flood is one of natural disasters with the worst loss in the world. It needs to assess flood disaster risk so that we can reduce the loss of flood disaster. Disaster management practical work needs the dynamic risk results of building. Rainstorm flood disaster system is a typical complex system. From the view of complex system theory, flood disaster risk is the interaction result of hazard effect objects, rainstorm flood hazard factors, and hazard environments. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is an important tool for complex system modeling. Rainstorm-flood building risk dynamic assessment method (RFBRDAM) was proposed using ABM in this paper. The interior structures and procedures of different agents in proposed meth had been designed. On the Netlogo platform, the proposed method was implemented to assess the building risk changes of the rainstorm flood disaster in the Huaihe River Basin using Agent-based simulation (ABS). The results indicated that the proposed method can dynamically assess building risk of the whole process for the rainstorm flood disaster. The results of this paper can provide one new approach for flood disaster building risk dynamic assessment and flood disaster management.

  13. Evolutionary leap in large-scale flood risk assessment needed

    OpenAIRE

    Vorogushyn, Sergiy; Bates, Paul D.; de Bruijn, Karin; Castellarin, Attilio; Kreibich, Heidi; Priest, Sally J.; Schröter, Kai; Bagli, Stefano; Blöschl, Günter; Domeneghetti, Alessio; Gouldby, Ben; Klijn, Frans; Lammersen, Rita; Neal, Jeffrey C.; Ridder, Nina

    2018-01-01

    Current approaches for assessing large-scale flood risks contravene the fundamental principles of the flood risk system functioning because they largely ignore basic interactions and feedbacks between atmosphere, catchments, river-floodplain systems and socio-economic processes. As a consequence, risk analyses are uncertain and might be biased. However, reliable risk estimates are required for prioritizing national investments in flood risk mitigation or for appraisal and management of insura...

  14. Impacts of extreme flooding on riverbank filtration water quality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ascott, M J; Lapworth, D J; Gooddy, D C; Sage, R C; Karapanos, I

    2016-06-01

    Riverbank filtration schemes form a significant component of public water treatment processes on a global level. Understanding the resilience and water quality recovery of these systems following severe flooding is critical for effective water resources management under potential future climate change. This paper assesses the impact of floodplain inundation on the water quality of a shallow aquifer riverbank filtration system and how water quality recovers following an extreme (1 in 17 year, duration >70 days, 7 day inundation) flood event. During the inundation event, riverbank filtrate water quality is dominated by rapid direct recharge and floodwater infiltration (high fraction of surface water, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) >140% baseline values, >1 log increase in micro-organic contaminants, microbial detects and turbidity, low specific electrical conductivity (SEC) 400% baseline). A rapid recovery is observed in water quality with most floodwater impacts only observed for 2-3 weeks after the flooding event and a return to normal groundwater conditions within 6 weeks (lower fraction of surface water, higher SEC, lower DOC, organic and microbial detects, DO). Recovery rates are constrained by the hydrogeological site setting, the abstraction regime and the water quality trends at site boundary conditions. In this case, increased abstraction rates and a high transmissivity aquifer facilitate rapid water quality recoveries, with longer term trends controlled by background river and groundwater qualities. Temporary reductions in abstraction rates appear to slow water quality recoveries. Flexible operating regimes such as the one implemented at this study site are likely to be required if shallow aquifer riverbank filtration systems are to be resilient to future inundation events. Development of a conceptual understanding of hydrochemical boundaries and site hydrogeology through monitoring is required to assess the suitability of a prospective riverbank filtration

  15. Estimating the benefits of single value and probability forecasting for flood warning

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verkade, J.S.; Werner, M.G.F.

    2011-01-01

    Flood risk can be reduced by means of flood forecasting, warning and response systems (FFWRS). These systems include a forecasting sub-system which is imperfect, meaning that inherent uncertainties in hydrological forecasts may result in false alarms and missed floods, or surprises. This forecasting

  16. Arduino Based Infant Monitoring System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Farhanah Mohamad Ishak, Daing Noor; Jamil, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul; Ambar, Radzi

    2017-08-01

    This paper proposes a system for monitoring infant in an incubator and records the relevant data into a computer. The data recorded by the system can be further referred by the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) personnel for diagnostic or research purposes. The study focuses on designing the monitoring system that consists of an incubator equipped with humidity sensor to measure the humidity level, and a pulse sensor that can be attached on an infant placed inside the incubator to monitor infant’s heart pulse. The measurement results which are the pulse rate and humidity level are sent to the PC via Arduino microcontroller. The advantage of this system will be that in the future, it may also enable doctors to closely monitor the infant condition through local area network and internet. This work is aimed as an example of an application that contributes towards remote tele-health monitoring system.

  17. Development of a flood-induced health risk prediction model for Africa

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, D.; Block, P. J.

    2017-12-01

    Globally, many floods occur in developing or tropical regions where the impact on public health is substantial, including death and injury, drinking water, endemic disease, and so on. Although these flood impacts on public health have been investigated, integrated management of floods and flood-induced health risks is technically and institutionally limited. Specifically, while the use of climatic and hydrologic forecasts for disaster management has been highlighted, analogous predictions for forecasting the magnitude and impact of health risks are lacking, as is the infrastructure for health early warning systems, particularly in developing countries. In this study, we develop flood-induced health risk prediction model for African regions using season-ahead flood predictions with climate drivers and a variety of physical and socio-economic information, such as local hazard, exposure, resilience, and health vulnerability indicators. Skillful prediction of flood and flood-induced health risks can contribute to practical pre- and post-disaster responses in both local- and global-scales, and may eventually be integrated into multi-hazard early warning systems for informed advanced planning and management. This is especially attractive for areas with limited observations and/or little capacity to develop flood-induced health risk warning systems.

  18. Flood characteristics of the Haor area in Bangladesh

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suman, Asadusjjaman; Bhattacharya, Biswa

    2013-04-01

    In recent years the world has experienced deaths, large-scale displacement of people, billions of Euros of economic damage, mental stress and ecosystem impacts due to flooding. Global changes (climate change, population and economic growth, and urbanisation) are exacerbating the severity of flooding. The 2010 floods in Pakistan and the 2011 floods in Australia and Thailand demonstrate the need for concerted action in the face of global societal and environmental changes to strengthen resilience against flooding. Bangladesh is a country, which is frequently suffering from flooding. The current research is conducted in the framework of a project, which focuses on the flooding issues in the Haor region in the north-east of Bangladesh. A haor is a saucer-shaped depression, which is used during the dry period (December to mid-May) for agriculture and as a fishery during the wet period (June-November), and thereby presents a very interesting socio-economic perspective of flood risk management. Pre-monsoon flooding till mid-May causes agricultural loss and lot of distress whereas monsoon flooding brings benefits. The area is bordering India, thereby presenting trans-boundary issues as well, and is fed by some flashy Indian catchments. The area is drained mainly through the Surma-Kushiyara river system. The terrain generally is flat and the flashy characteristics die out within a short distance from the border. Limited studies on the region, particularly with the help of numerical models, have been carried out in the past. Therefore, an objective of the current research was to set up numerical models capable of reasonably emulating the physical system. Such models could, for example, associate different gauges to the spatio-temporal variation of hydrodynamic variables and help in carrying out a systemic study on the impact of climate changes. A 1D2D model, with one-dimensional model for the rivers (based on MIKE 11 modelling tool from Danish Hydraulic Institute) and a two

  19. Mapping flood hazards under uncertainty through probabilistic flood inundation maps

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stephens, T.; Bledsoe, B. P.; Miller, A. J.; Lee, G.

    2017-12-01

    Changing precipitation, rapid urbanization, and population growth interact to create unprecedented challenges for flood mitigation and management. Standard methods for estimating risk from flood inundation maps generally involve simulations of floodplain hydraulics for an established regulatory discharge of specified frequency. Hydraulic model results are then geospatially mapped and depicted as a discrete boundary of flood extents and a binary representation of the probability of inundation (in or out) that is assumed constant over a project's lifetime. Consequently, existing methods utilized to define flood hazards and assess risk management are hindered by deterministic approaches that assume stationarity in a nonstationary world, failing to account for spatio-temporal variability of climate and land use as they translate to hydraulic models. This presentation outlines novel techniques for portraying flood hazards and the results of multiple flood inundation maps spanning hydroclimatic regions. Flood inundation maps generated through modeling of floodplain hydraulics are probabilistic reflecting uncertainty quantified through Monte-Carlo analyses of model inputs and parameters under current and future scenarios. The likelihood of inundation and range of variability in flood extents resulting from Monte-Carlo simulations are then compared with deterministic evaluations of flood hazards from current regulatory flood hazard maps. By facilitating alternative approaches of portraying flood hazards, the novel techniques described in this presentation can contribute to a shifting paradigm in flood management that acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in model estimates and the nonstationary behavior of land use and climate.

  20. Water Quality Dynamics of Urban Water Bodies during Flooding in Can Tho City, Vietnam

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hong Quan Nguyen

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Water pollution associated with flooding is one of the major problems in cities in the global South. However, studies of water quality dynamics during flood events are not often reported in literature, probably due to difficult conditions for sampling during flood events. Water quality parameters in open water (canals, rivers, and lakes, flood water on roads and water in sewers have been monitored during the extreme fluvial flood event on 7 October 2013 in the city of Can Tho, Vietnam. This is the pioneering study of urban flood water pollution in real time in Vietnam. The results showed that water quality is very dynamic during flooding, especially at the beginning of the event. In addition, it was observed that the pathogen and contaminant levels in the flood water are almost as high as in sewers. The findings show that population exposed to flood water runs a health risk that is nearly equal to that of being in contact with sewer water. Therefore, the people of Can Tho not only face physical risk due to flooding, but are also exposed to health risks.

  1. The 2014 Karnali River Floods in Western Nepal: Making Community Based Early Warning Systems Work When Data Is Lacking

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dugar, S.; MacClune, K.; Venkateswaran, K.; Yadav, S.; Szoenyi, M.

    2015-12-01

    Implementing Community Based Flood Early Warning System (EWS) in developing countries like Nepal is challenging. Complex topography and geology combined with a sparse network of river and rainfall gauges and little predictive meteorological capacity both nationally and regionally dramatically constrain EWS options. This paper provides a synopsis of the hydrological and meteorological conditions that led to flooding in the Karnali River, West Nepal during mid-August 2014, and analyses the effectiveness of flood EWS in the region. On August 14-15, 2014, a large, slow moving weather system deposited record breaking rainfall in the foothills of the Karnali River catchment. Precipitation depths of 200 to 500 mm were recorded over a 24-hour period, which led to rapid rise of river heights. At the Chisapani river gauge station used for the existing EWS, where the Karnali River exits the Himalaya onto the Indo-Gangetic Plain, water levels rapidly exceeded the 11 meter danger level. Between 3 to 6 am, water levels rose from 11 to 16. 1 meters, well beyond the design height of 15 meters. Analysis suggests that 2014 floods may have been a one-in-1000 year event. Starting with the onset of intense rainfall, the Chisapani gauge reader was in regular communication with downstream stakeholders and communities providing them with timely information regarding rising water level. This provided people just enough time to move to safe places with their livestock and key assets. Though households still lost substantial assets, without the EWS, floodwaters would have caught communities completely unaware and damage would almost certainly have been much worse. In particular, despite the complications associated with access to the Chisapani gauge and failure of critical communication nodes during the floods, EWS was instrumental in saving lives. This study explores both the details of the flood event and performance of the early warning system, and identifies lessons learned to help

  2. Elk River Watershed - Flood Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barnes, C. C.; Byrne, J. M.; MacDonald, R. J.; Lewis, D.

    2014-12-01

    Flooding has the potential to cause significant impacts to economic activities as well as to disrupt or displace populations. Changing climate regimes such as extreme precipitation events increase flood vulnerability and put additional stresses on infrastructure. Potential flooding from just under 100 (2009 NPRI Reviewed Facility Data Release, Environment Canada) toxic tailings ponds located in Canada increase risk to human safety and the environment. One such geotechnical failure spilt billions of litres of toxic tailings into the Fraser River watershed, British Columbia, when a tailings pond dam breach occurred in August 2014. Damaged and washed out roadways cut access to essential services as seen by the extensive floods that occurred in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in July 2014, and in Southern Alberta in 2013. Recovery efforts from events such as these can be lengthy, and have substantial social and economic impacts both in loss of revenue and cost of repair. The objective of this study is to investigate existing conditions in the Elk River watershed and model potential future hydrological changes that can increase flood risk hazards. By analyzing existing hydrology, meteorology, land cover, land use, economic, and settlement patterns a baseline is established for existing conditions in the Elk River watershed. Coupling the Generate Earth Systems Science (GENESYS) high-resolution spatial hydrometeorological model with flood hazard analysis methodology, high-resolution flood vulnerability base line maps are created using historical climate conditions. Further work in 2015 will examine possible impacts for a range of climate change and land use change scenarios to define changes to future flood risk and vulnerability.

  3. Hierarchical Modelling of Flood Risk for Engineering Decision Analysis

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Custer, Rocco

    protection structures in the hierarchical flood protection system - is identified. To optimise the design of protection structures, fragility and vulnerability models must allow for consideration of decision alternatives. While such vulnerability models are available for large protection structures (e...... systems, as well as the implementation of the flood risk analysis methodology and the vulnerability modelling approach are illustrated with an example application. In summary, the present thesis provides a characterisation of hierarchical flood protection systems as well as several methodologies to model...... and robust. Traditional risk management solutions, e.g. dike construction, are not particularly flexible, as they are difficult to adapt to changing risk. Conversely, the recent concept of integrated flood risk management, entailing a combination of several structural and non-structural risk management...

  4. Coastal and Riverine Flood Forecast Model powered by ADCIRC

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khalid, A.; Ferreira, C.

    2017-12-01

    Coastal flooding is becoming a major threat to increased population in the coastal areas. To protect coastal communities from tropical storms & hurricane damages, early warning systems are being developed. These systems have the capability of real time flood forecasting to identify hazardous coastal areas and aid coastal communities in rescue operations. State of the art hydrodynamic models forced by atmospheric forcing have given modelers the ability to forecast storm surge, water levels and currents. This helps to identify the areas threatened by intense storms. Study on Chesapeake Bay area has gained national importance because of its combined riverine and coastal phenomenon, which leads to greater uncertainty in flood predictions. This study presents an automated flood forecast system developed by following Advanced Circulation (ADCIRC) Surge Guidance System (ASGS) guidelines and tailored to take in riverine and coastal boundary forcing, thus includes all the hydrodynamic processes to forecast total water in the Potomac River. As studies on tidal and riverine flow interaction are very scarce in number, our forecast system would be a scientific tool to examine such area and fill the gaps with precise prediction for Potomac River. Real-time observations from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and field measurements have been used as model boundary feeding. The model performance has been validated by using major historical riverine and coastal flooding events. Hydrodynamic model ADCIRC produced promising predictions for flood inundation areas. As better forecasts can be achieved by using coupled models, this system is developed to take boundary conditions from Global WaveWatchIII for the research purposes. Wave and swell propagation will be fed through Global WavewatchIII model to take into account the effects of swells and currents. This automated forecast system is currently undergoing rigorous testing to include any missing parameters which

  5. Socio-economic impacts of major floods in Italy from 1951 to 2003

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lastoria, B.; Simonetti, M. R.; Casaioli, M.; Mariani, S.; Monacelli, G.

    2006-03-01

    Meteorological and hydrological monitoring and modeling, with particular regard for extreme hydrological events, represent important activities carried out by the Hydrological and Inland Waters Service of the Italian Agency for Environmental Protection and Technical Services (APAT). Recently, a study on the socio-economic effects of floods was published in the Italian Environmental Data Yearbook by APAT. It is based on processed data related to the major floods (i.e., events with at least a casualty or that have generated economic damages higher than 0.001% of the Gross Domestic Product) striking Italy between 1951 and 2003. Information was gathered from technical reports and/or databases belonging to APAT, Italian Regional Environmental Agencies (ARPAs), central and local authorities, research institutions and newspaper reports. These data are collected in tables reporting the number of flood events and of casualties and the amount of financial resources required for environmental restoration and/or for risk mitigation purposes. For year 2003, when APAT has begun a systematic monitoring of flood events in Italy, data concerning rainfall, number of persons involved, evacuation and urgent measures introduced to face the event (laws and acts) are also included. In this way, it was possible to realize a new database, in which flood events that caused the declaration of the state of emergency have been collected. Because of the difficulties in finding sufficiently reliable data for the period before the II World War, the collection of historical data started from 1951. During this period, about 50% of the flood events examined have caused at least 5 victims each, and about 10% more than 100; these data highlight the considerable social impact of flood events and suggest the importance of creating an integrated database to collect information about flood events involving all Europe. These two databases (the historical and updating archives) could be useful for taking

  6. Deciphering flood frequency curves from a coupled human-nature system perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, H. Y.; Abeshu, G. W.; Wang, W.; Ye, S.; Guo, J.; Bloeschl, G.; Leung, L. R.

    2017-12-01

    Most previous studies and applications in deriving or applying FFC are underpinned by the stationarity assumption. To examine the theoretical robustness of this basic assumption, we analyzed the observed FFCs at hundreds of catchments in the contiguous United States along the gradients of climate conditions and human influences. The shape of FFCs is described using three similarity indices: mean annual floods (MAF), coefficient of variance (CV), and a seasonality index defined using circular statistics. The characteristics of catchments are quantified with a small number of dimensionless indices, including particularly: 1) the climatic aridity index, AI, which is a measure of the competition between energy and water availability; 2) reservoir impact index, defined as the total upstream reservoir storage capacity normalized by the annual streamflow volume. The linkages between these two sets of indices are then explored based on a combination of mathematical derivations of the Budyko formula, simple but physically based reservoir operation models, and other auxiliary data. It is found that the shape of FFCs shifts from arid to humid climate, and from periods with weak human influences to periods with strong influences. The seasonality of floods is found to be largely controlled by the synchronization between the seasonal cycles of precipitation and solar radiation in pristine catchments, but also by the reservoir regulation capacity in managed catchments. Our findings may help improve flood-risk assessment and mitigation in both natural and regulated river systems across various climate gradients.

  7. Combining Satellite Measurements and Numerical Flood Prediction Models to Save Lives and Property from Flooding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saleh, F.; Garambois, P. A.; Biancamaria, S.

    2017-12-01

    Floods are considered the major natural threats to human societies across all continents. Consequences of floods in highly populated areas are more dramatic with losses of human lives and substantial property damage. This risk is projected to increase with the effects of climate change, particularly sea-level rise, increasing storm frequencies and intensities and increasing population and economic assets in such urban watersheds. Despite the advances in computational resources and modeling techniques, significant gaps exist in predicting complex processes and accurately representing the initial state of the system. Improving flood prediction models and data assimilation chains through satellite has become an absolute priority to produce accurate flood forecasts with sufficient lead times. The overarching goal of this work is to assess the benefits of the Surface Water Ocean Topography SWOT satellite data from a flood prediction perspective. The near real time methodology is based on combining satellite data from a simulator that mimics the future SWOT data, numerical models, high resolution elevation data and real-time local measurement in the New York/New Jersey area.

  8. Flood Risk Management In Europe: European flood regulation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hegger, D.L.T.; Bakker, M.H.; Green, C.; Driessen, Peter; Delvaux, B.; Rijswick, H.F.M.W. van; Suykens, C.; Beyers, J-C.; Deketelaere, K.; Doorn-Hoekveld, W. van; Dieperink, C.

    2013-01-01

    In Europe, water management is moving from flood defense to a risk management approach, which takes both the probability and the potential consequences of flooding into account. In this report, we will look at Directives and (non-)EU- initiatives in place to deal with flood risk in Europe indirectly

  9. Technical note: River modelling to infer flood management framework

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    River hydraulic models have successfully identified the weaknesses and areas for improvement with respect to flooding in the Sarawak River system, and can also be used to support decisions on flood management measures. Often, the big question is 'how'. This paper demonstrates a theoretical flood management ...

  10. Citizen involvement in flood risk governance: flood groups and networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Twigger-Ross Clare

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Over the past decade has been a policy shift withinUK flood risk management towards localism with an emphasis on communities taking ownership of flood risk. There is also an increased focus on resilience and, more specifically, on community resilience to flooding. This paper draws on research carried out for UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs to evaluate the Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP scheme in England. Resilience is conceptualised as multidimensional and linked to exisiting capacities within a community. Creating resilience to flooding is an ongoing process of adaptation, learning from past events and preparing for future risks. This paper focusses on the development of formal and informal institutions to support improved flood risk management: institutional resilience capacity. It includes new institutions: e.g. flood groups, as well as activities that help to build inter- and intra- institutional resilience capacity e.g. community flood planning. The pathfinder scheme consisted of 13 projects across England led by local authorities aimed at developing community resilience to flood risk between 2013 – 2015. This paper discusses the nature and structure of flood groups, the process of their development, and the extent of their linkages with formal institutions, drawing out the barriers and facilitators to developing institutional resilience at the local level.

  11. A Multimethod Approach towards Assessing Urban Flood Patterns and Its Associated Vulnerabilities in Singapore

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Winston T. L. Chow

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available We investigated flooding patterns in the urbanised city-state of Singapore through a multimethod approach combining station precipitation data with archival newspaper and governmental records; changes in flash floods frequencies or reported impacts of floods towards Singapore society were documented. We subsequently discussed potential flooding impacts in the context of urban vulnerability, based on future urbanisation and forecasted precipitation projections for Singapore. We find that, despite effective flood management, (i significant increases in reported flash flood frequency occurred in contemporary (post-2000 relative to preceding (1984–1999 periods, (ii these flash floods coincide with more localised, “patchy” storm events, (iii storms in recent years are also more intense and frequent, and (iv floods result in low human casualties but have high economic costs via insurance damage claims. We assess that Singapore presently has low vulnerability to floods vis-à-vis other regional cities largely due to holistic flood management via consistent and successful infrastructural development, widespread flood monitoring, and effective advisory platforms. We conclude, however, that future vulnerabilities may increase from stresses arising from physical exposure to climate change and from demographic sensitivity via rapid population growth. Anticipating these changes is potentially useful in maintaining the high resilience of Singapore towards this hydrometeorological hazard.

  12. Decision support system emergency planning, creating evacuation strategies in the event of flooding

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Windhouwer, C.J.; Klunder, G.A.; Sanders, F.M.

    2005-01-01

    The Decision Support System (DSS) Emergency Planning is designed for use in the event of sea or river flooding. It makes accessible all the information related to the decision whether to evacuate an area. An important factor in this decision is the time required for the evacuation. The model used by

  13. The challenge of forecasting impacts of flash floods: test of a simplified hydraulic approach and validation based on insurance claim data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Le Bihan, Guillaume; Payrastre, Olivier; Gaume, Eric; Moncoulon, David; Pons, Frédéric

    2017-11-01

    Up to now, flash flood monitoring and forecasting systems, based on rainfall radar measurements and distributed rainfall-runoff models, generally aimed at estimating flood magnitudes - typically discharges or return periods - at selected river cross sections. The approach presented here goes one step further by proposing an integrated forecasting chain for the direct assessment of flash flood possible impacts on inhabited areas (number of buildings at risk in the presented case studies). The proposed approach includes, in addition to a distributed rainfall-runoff model, an automatic hydraulic method suited for the computation of flood extent maps on a dense river network and over large territories. The resulting catalogue of flood extent maps is then combined with land use data to build a flood impact curve for each considered river reach, i.e. the number of inundated buildings versus discharge. These curves are finally used to compute estimated impacts based on forecasted discharges. The approach has been extensively tested in the regions of Alès and Draguignan, located in the south of France, where well-documented major flash floods recently occurred. The article presents two types of validation results. First, the automatically computed flood extent maps and corresponding water levels are tested against rating curves at available river gauging stations as well as against local reference or observed flood extent maps. Second, a rich and comprehensive insurance claim database is used to evaluate the relevance of the estimated impacts for some recent major floods.

  14. Morphological records of storm floods exemplified by the impact of the 1872 Baltic storm on a sandy spit system in south-eastern Denmark

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Clemmensen, Lars B; Bendixen, Mette; Hede, Mikkel Ulfeldt

    2014-01-01

    Beach-ridge systems are important geo-archives providing evidence for past wave climate including catastrophic storm flood events. This study investigates the morphological impacts of the 1872 Baltic storm flood on a beach-ridge system (sandy spit) in south-eastern Denmark and evaluates the frequ...

  15. Flood protection diversification to reduce probabilities of extreme losses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Qian; Lambert, James H; Karvetski, Christopher W; Keisler, Jeffrey M; Linkov, Igor

    2012-11-01

    Recent catastrophic losses because of floods require developing resilient approaches to flood risk protection. This article assesses how diversification of a system of coastal protections might decrease the probabilities of extreme flood losses. The study compares the performance of portfolios each consisting of four types of flood protection assets in a large region of dike rings. A parametric analysis suggests conditions in which diversifications of the types of included flood protection assets decrease extreme flood losses. Increased return periods of extreme losses are associated with portfolios where the asset types have low correlations of economic risk. The effort highlights the importance of understanding correlations across asset types in planning for large-scale flood protection. It allows explicit integration of climate change scenarios in developing flood mitigation strategy. © 2012 Society for Risk Analysis.

  16. Flood Risk Management: Exploring the Impacts of the Community Rating System Program on Poverty and Income Inequality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Noonan, Douglas S; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem A

    2018-03-01

    Flooding remains a major problem for the United States, causing numerous deaths and damaging countless properties. To reduce the impact of flooding on communities, the U.S. government established the Community Rating System (CRS) in 1990 to reduce flood damages by incentivizing communities to engage in flood risk management initiatives that surpass those required by the National Flood Insurance Program. In return, communities enjoy discounted flood insurance premiums. Despite the fact that the CRS raises concerns about the potential for unevenly distributed impacts across different income groups, no study has examined the equity implications of the CRS. This study thus investigates the possibility of unintended consequences of the CRS by answering the question: What is the effect of the CRS on poverty and income inequality? Understanding the impacts of the CRS on poverty and income inequality is useful in fully assessing the unintended consequences of the CRS. The study estimates four fixed-effects regression models using a panel data set of neighborhood-level observations from 1970 to 2010. The results indicate that median incomes are lower in CRS communities, but rise in floodplains. Also, the CRS attracts poor residents, but relocates them away from floodplains. Additionally, the CRS attracts top earners, including in floodplains. Finally, the CRS encourages income inequality, but discourages income inequality in floodplains. A better understanding of these unintended consequences of the CRS on poverty and income inequality can help to improve the design and performance of the CRS and, ultimately, increase community resilience to flood disasters. © 2017 Society for Risk Analysis.

  17. Nitrogen dynamics in flooded soil systems: An overview on concepts and performance of models

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Khairudin, Nurul; Gaydon, Donald S.; Jing, Qi; Zakaria, Mohamad P.; Struik, Paul C.; Keesman, Karel J.

    2018-01-01

    Extensive modelling studies on nitrogen (N) dynamics in flooded soil systems have been published. Consequently, many N dynamics models are available for users to select from. With the current research trend, inclined towards multi-disciplinary research, and with substantial progress in understanding

  18. System health monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Reneke, J.A.; Fryer, M.O.

    1995-01-01

    Well designed large systems include many instrument taking data. These data are used in a variety of ways. They are used to control the system and its components, to monitor system and component health, and often for historical or financial purposes. This paper discusses a new method of using data from low level instrumentation to monitor system and component health. The method uses the covariance of instrument outputs to calculate a measure of system change. The method involves no complicated modeling since it is not a parameter estimation algorithm. The method is iterative and can be implemented on a computer in real time. Examples are presented for a metal lathe and a high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter. It is shown that the proposed method is quite sensitive to system changes such as wear out and failure. The method is useful for low level system diagnostics and fault detection

  19. The Use of Sentinel-1 Time-Series Data to Improve Flood Monitoring in Arid Areas

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sandro Martinis

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Due to the similarity of the radar backscatter over open water and over sand surfaces a reliable near real-time flood mapping based on satellite radar sensors is usually not possible in arid areas. Within this study, an approach is presented to enhance the results of an automatic Sentinel-1 flood processing chain by removing overestimations of the water extent related to low-backscattering sand surfaces using a Sand Exclusion Layer (SEL derived from time-series statistics of Sentinel-1 data sets. The methodology was tested and validated on a flood event in May 2016 at Webi Shabelle River, Somalia and Ethiopia, which has been covered by a time-series of 202 Sentinel-1 scenes within the period June 2014 to May 2017. The approach proved capable of significantly improving the classification accuracy of the Sentinel-1 flood service within this study site. The Overall Accuracy increased by ~5% to a value of 98.5% and the User’s Accuracy increased by 25.2% to a value of 96.0%. Experimental results have shown that the classification accuracy is influenced by several parameters such as the lengths of the time-series used for generating the SEL.

  20. LiDAR and IFSAR-Based Flood Inundation Model Estimates for Flood-Prone Areas of Afghanistan

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnson, W. C.; Goldade, M. M.; Kastens, J.; Dobbs, K. E.; Macpherson, G. L.

    2014-12-01

    Extreme flood events are not unusual in semi-arid to hyper-arid regions of the world, and Afghanistan is no exception. Recent flashfloods and flashflood-induced landslides took nearly 100 lives and destroyed or damaged nearly 2000 homes in 12 villages within Guzargah-e-Nur district of Baghlan province in northeastern Afghanistan. With available satellite imagery, flood-water inundation estimation can be accomplished remotely, thereby providing a means to reduce the impact of such flood events by improving shared situational awareness during major flood events. Satellite orbital considerations, weather, cost, data licensing restrictions, and other issues can often complicate the acquisition of appropriately timed imagery. Given the need for tools to supplement imagery where not available, complement imagery when it is available, and bridge the gap between imagery based flood mapping and traditional hydrodynamic modeling approaches, we have developed a topographic floodplain model (FLDPLN), which has been used to identify and map river valley floodplains with elevation data ranging from 90-m SRTM to 1-m LiDAR. Floodplain "depth to flood" (DTF) databases generated by FLDPLN are completely seamless and modular. FLDPLN has been applied in Afghanistan to flood-prone areas along the northern and southern flanks of the Hindu Kush mountain range to generate a continuum of 1-m increment flood-event models up to 10 m in depth. Elevation data used in this application of FLDPLN included high-resolution, drone-acquired LiDAR (~1 m) and IFSAR (5 m; INTERMAP). Validation of the model has been accomplished using the best available satellite-derived flood inundation maps, such as those issued by Unitar's Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT). Results provide a quantitative approach to evaluating the potential risk to urban/village infrastructure as well as to irrigation systems, agricultural fields and archaeological sites.

  1. Investigation of Flood Risk Assessment in Inaccessible Regions using Multiple Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lim, J.; Lee, K. S.

    2017-12-01

    Flooding is extremely dangerous when a river overflows to inundate an urban area. From 1995 to 2016, North Korea (NK) experienced annual extensive damage to life and property almost each year due to a levee breach resulting from typhoons and heavy rainfall during the summer monsoon season. Recently, Hoeryeong City (2016) experienced heavy rainfall during typhoon Lionrock and the resulting flood killed and injured many people (68,900) and destroyed numerous buildings and settlements (11,600). The NK state media described it as the biggest national disaster since 1945. Thus, almost all annual repeat occurrences of floods in NK have had a serious impact, which makes it necessary to figure out the extent of floods in restoring the damaged environment. In addition, traditional hydrological model is impractical to delineate Flood Damaged Areas (FDAs) in NK due to the inaccessibility. Under such a situation, multiple optical Remote Sensing (RS) and radar RS along with a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based spatial analysis were utilized in this study (1) to develop modelling FDA delineation using multiple RS and GIS methods and (2) to conduct flood risk assessment in NK. Interpreting high-resolution web-based satellite imagery were also implemented to confirm the results of the study. From the study result, it was found that (1) on August 30th, 2016, an area of 117.2 km2 (8.6%) at Hoeryeong City was inundated. Most floods occurred in flat areas with a lower and middle stream order. (2) In the binary logistic regression model applied in this study, the distance from the nearest stream map and landform map variables are important factors to delineate FDAs because these two factors reflect heterogeneous mountainous NK topography. (3) Total annual flood risk of study area is estimated to be ₩454.13 million NKW ($504,417.24 USD, and ₩576.53 million SKW). The risk of the confluence of the Tumen River and Hoeryeong stream appears to be the highest. (4) High resolution

  2. A Bayesian decision approach to rainfall thresholds based flood warning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. L. V. Martina

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available Operational real time flood forecasting systems generally require a hydrological model to run in real time as well as a series of hydro-informatics tools to transform the flood forecast into relatively simple and clear messages to the decision makers involved in flood defense. The scope of this paper is to set forth the possibility of providing flood warnings at given river sections based on the direct comparison of the quantitative precipitation forecast with critical rainfall threshold values, without the need of an on-line real time forecasting system. This approach leads to an extremely simplified alert system to be used by non technical stakeholders and could also be used to supplement the traditional flood forecasting systems in case of system failures. The critical rainfall threshold values, incorporating the soil moisture initial conditions, result from statistical analyses using long hydrological time series combined with a Bayesian utility function minimization. In the paper, results of an application of the proposed methodology to the Sieve river, a tributary of the Arno river in Italy, are given to exemplify its practical applicability.

  3. Integrated Monitoring System of Production Processes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Oborski Przemysław

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Integrated monitoring system for discrete manufacturing processes is presented in the paper. The multilayer hardware and software reference model was developed. Original research are an answer for industry needs of the integration of information flow in production process. Reference model corresponds with proposed data model based on multilayer data tree allowing to describe orders, products, processes and save monitoring data. Elaborated models were implemented in the integrated monitoring system demonstrator developed in the project. It was built on the base of multiagent technology to assure high flexibility and openness on applying intelligent algorithms for data processing. Currently on the base of achieved experience an application integrated monitoring system for real production system is developed. In the article the main problems of monitoring integration are presented, including specificity of discrete production, data processing and future application of Cyber-Physical-Systems. Development of manufacturing systems is based more and more on taking an advantage of applying intelligent solutions into machine and production process control and monitoring. Connection of technical systems, machine tools and manufacturing processes monitoring with advanced information processing seems to be one of the most important areas of near future development. It will play important role in efficient operation and competitiveness of the whole production system. It is also important area of applying in the future Cyber-Physical-Systems that can radically improve functionally of monitoring systems and reduce the cost of its implementation.

  4. Monitoring Urban Stream Restoration Efforts in Relation to Flood Behavior Along Minebank Run, Towson, MD

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, G.; Miller, A. J.

    2017-12-01

    Urban stream restoration efforts are commonly undertaken to combat channel degradation and restore natural stream hydrology. We examine changes in flood patterns along an approximately 1.5-mile reach of Minebank Run, located in Towson, MD, by comparing pre-restoration morphology from surveys conducted in 2001, post-restoration morphology in 2007, and current conditions in 2017 following damage to the restoration project from persistent flooding. Hydraulic modeling was conducted in HEC-RAS 2D using three alternative scenarios: 1) topographic contours from a 2001 survey of pre-restoration topography combined with 2005 LiDAR, 2) 2007 survey combined with 2005 LiDAR data representing the post-restoration channel morphology, and 3) a March 2017 DEM of current channel conditions. The 2017 DEM was created using Structure from Motion (SfM) from high resolution 4K video collected via Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flights at a resolution of 0.05 meters. Flood hydrographs from a USGS stream gage located within the study reach as well as a simulated hydrograph of the 100-year storm event were routed through the pre-restoration, post-restoration, and current modeled terrain and analyzed for changes in water-surface elevation and depth, inundation extent, 2-d velocity fields, and translation vs. attenuation of the flood wave to assess the net impact on potential flood hazards. In addition, our study demonstrates that SfM is a quick and inexpensive method for collecting topographic data for hydrologic modeling, assessing stream characteristics including channel bed roughness, and for examining short term changes of channel morphology at a very fine scale.

  5. Maintenance of radiation monitoring systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Aoyama, Kei

    2001-01-01

    As the safety and quality of atomic power facilities are more strongly required, the reliability improvement and preventive maintenance of radiation monitoring systems are important. This paper describes the maintenance of radiation monitoring systems delivered by Fuji Electric and the present status of preventive maintenance technology. Also it introduces the case that we developed a fault diagnosis function adopting a statistics technique and artificial intelligence (AI) and delivered a radiation monitoring system including this function. This system can output a fault analysis result and a countermeasure from the computer in real time. (author)

  6. Flood-rich and flood-poor periods in Spain in 1942-2009

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mediero, Luis; Santillán, David; Garrote, Luis

    2016-04-01

    Several studies to detect trends in flood series at either national or trans-national scales have been conducted. Mediero et al. (2015) studied flood trends by using the longest streamflow records available in Europe. They found a decreasing trend in the Atlantic, Continental and Scandinavian regions. More specifically, Mediero et al. (2014) found a general decreasing trend in flood series in Spain in the period 1959-2009. Trends in flood series are usually detected by the Mann-Kendall test applied to a given period. However, the result of the Mann-Kendall test can change in terms of the starting and ending year of the series. Flood oscillations can occur and flood-rich and flood-poor periods could condition the results, especially when they are located at the beginning or end of the series. A methodology to identify statistically significant flood-rich and flood-poor periods is developed, based on the comparison between the expected sampling variability of floods when stationarity is assumed and the observed variability of floods in a given series. The methodology is applied to the longest series of annual maximum floods, peaks over threshold and counts of annual occurrences in peaks over threshold series observed in Spain in the period 1942-2009. A flood-rich period in 1950-1970 and a flood-poor period in 1970-1990 are identified in most of the selected sites. The generalised decreasing trend in flood series found by Mediero et al. (2014) could be explained by a flood-rich period placed at the beginning of the series and a flood-poor period located at the end of the series. References: Mediero, L., Kjeldsen, T.R., Macdonald, N., Kohnova, S., Merz, B., Vorogushyn, S., Wilson, D., Alburquerque, T., Blöschl, G., Bogdanowicz, E., Castellarin, A., Hall, J., Kobold, M., Kriauciuniene, J., Lang, M., Madsen, H., Onuşluel Gül, G., Perdigão, R.A.P., Roald, L.A., Salinas, J.L., Toumazis, A.D., Veijalainen, N., Óðinn Þórarinsson. Identification of coherent flood

  7. Crowdsourcing detailed flood data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walliman, Nicholas; Ogden, Ray; Amouzad*, Shahrzhad

    2015-04-01

    Over the last decade the average annual loss across the European Union due to flooding has been 4.5bn Euros, but increasingly intense rainfall, as well as population growth, urbanisation and the rising costs of asset replacements, may see this rise to 23bn Euros a year by 2050. Equally disturbing are the profound social costs to individuals, families and communities which in addition to loss of lives include: loss of livelihoods, decreased purchasing and production power, relocation and migration, adverse psychosocial effects, and hindrance of economic growth and development. Flood prediction, management and defence strategies rely on the availability of accurate information and flood modelling. Whilst automated data gathering (by measurement and satellite) of the extent of flooding is already advanced it is least reliable in urban and physically complex geographies where often the need for precise estimation is most acute. Crowdsourced data of actual flood events is a potentially critical component of this allowing improved accuracy in situations and identifying the effects of local landscape and topography where the height of a simple kerb, or discontinuity in a boundary wall can have profound importance. Mobile 'App' based data acquisition using crowdsourcing in critical areas can combine camera records with GPS positional data and time, as well as descriptive data relating to the event. This will automatically produce a dataset, managed in ArcView GIS, with the potential for follow up calls to get more information through structured scripts for each strand. Through this local residents can provide highly detailed information that can be reflected in sophisticated flood protection models and be core to framing urban resilience strategies and optimising the effectiveness of investment. This paper will describe this pioneering approach that will develop flood event data in support of systems that will advance existing approaches such as developed in the in the UK

  8. Configuration of Risk Monitor System by PLant Defense-In.Depth Monitor and Relability Monitor

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Yoshikawa, Hidekazu; Lind, Morten; Yang, Ming

    2012-01-01

    A new method of risk monitor system of a nuclear power plant has been proposed from the aspect by what degree of safety functions incorporated in the plant system is maintained by multiple barriers of defense-in-depth (DiD). Wherein, the central idea is plant DiD risk monitor and reliability...... monitor derived from the four aspects of (i) design principle of nuclear safety to realize DiD concept, (ii) definition of risk and risk to be monitored, (iii) severe accident phenomena as major risk, (iv) scheme of risk ranking, and (v) dynamic risk display. In this paper, the overall frame...... of the proposed frame on risk monitor system is summarized and the detailed discussion is made on the definitions of major terminologies of risk, risk ranking, anatomy of fault occurrence, two-layer configuration of risk monitor, how to configure individual elements of plant DiD risk monitor and its example...

  9. Flooding Capability for River-based Scenarios

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Smith, Curtis L. [Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States); Prescott, Steven [Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States); Ryan, Emerald [Idaho State Univ., Pocatello, ID (United States); Calhoun, Donna [Boise State Univ., ID (United States); Sampath, Ramprasad [Centroid Labs., Los Angeles, CA (United States); Anderson, S. Danielle [Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States); Casteneda, Cody [Boise State Univ., ID (United States)

    2015-10-01

    This report describes the initial investigation into modeling and simulation tools for application of riverine flooding representation as part of the Risk-Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) Pathway external hazards evaluations. The report provides examples of different flooding conditions and scenarios that could impact river and watershed systems. Both 2D and 3D modeling approaches are described.

  10. Configuration of risk monitor system by plant defense-in-depth risk monitor and reliability monitor

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yoshikawa, Hidekazu; Lind Morten; Yang Ming; Hashim Muhammad; Zhang Zhijian

    2012-01-01

    A new method of risk monitor system of a nuclear power plant has been proposed from the aspect by what degree of safety functions incorporated in the plant system is maintained by multiple barriers of defense-in-depth (DiD). Wherein, the central idea is plant DiD risk monitor and reliability monitor derived from the five aspects of (1) design principle of nuclear safety based on DiD concept, (2) definition of risk and risk to be monitored, (3) severe accident phenomena as major risk, (4) scheme of risk ranking, and (5) dynamic risk display. In this paper, the overall frame of the proposed risk monitor system is summarized and the detailed discussion is made on major items such as definition of risk and risk ranking, anatomy of fault occurrence, two-layer configuration of risk monitor, how to configure individual elements of plant DiD risk monitor, and lastly how to apply for a PWR safety system. (author)

  11. Rethinking the relationship between flood risk perception and flood management.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Birkholz, S; Muro, M; Jeffrey, P; Smith, H M

    2014-04-15

    Although flood risk perceptions and their concomitant motivations for behaviour have long been recognised as significant features of community resilience in the face of flooding events, there has, for some time now, been a poorly appreciated fissure in the accompanying literature. Specifically, rationalist and constructivist paradigms in the broader domain of risk perception provide different (though not always conflicting) contexts for interpreting evidence and developing theory. This contribution reviews the major constructs that have been applied to understanding flood risk perceptions and contextualises these within broader conceptual developments around risk perception theory and contemporary thinking around flood risk management. We argue that there is a need to re-examine and re-invigorate flood risk perception research, in a manner that is comprehensively underpinned by more constructivist thinking around flood risk management as well as by developments in broader risk perception research. We draw attention to an historical over-emphasis on the cognitive perceptions of those at risk to the detriment of a richer understanding of a wider range of flood risk perceptions such as those of policy-makers or of tax-payers who live outside flood affected areas as well as the linkages between these perspectives and protective measures such as state-supported flood insurance schemes. Conclusions challenge existing understandings of the relationship between risk perception and flood management, particularly where the latter relates to communication strategies and the extent to which those at risk from flooding feel responsible for taking protective actions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  12. Flooding of the root system in soybean: biochemical and molecular aspects of N metabolism in the nodule during stress and recovery.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Souza, Sarah C R; Mazzafera, Paulo; Sodek, Ladaslav

    2016-05-01

    Nitrogen fixation of the nodule of soybean is highly sensitive to oxygen deficiency such as provoked by waterlogging of the root system. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of flooding on N metabolism in nodules of soybean. Flooding resulted in a marked decrease of asparagine (the most abundant amino acid) and a concomitant accumulation of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Flooding also resulted in a strong reduction of the incorporation of (15)N2 in amino acids. Nodule amino acids labelled before flooding rapidly lost (15)N during flooding, except for GABA, which initially increased and declined slowly thereafter. Both nitrogenase activity and the expression of nifH and nifD genes were strongly decreased on flooding. Expression of the asparagine synthetase genes SAS1 and SAS2 was reduced, especially the former. Expression of genes encoding the enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD1, GAD4, GAD5) was also strongly suppressed except for GAD2 which increased. Almost all changes observed during flooding were reversible after draining. Possible changes in asparagine and GABA metabolism that may explain the marked fluctuations of these amino acids during flooding are discussed. It is suggested that the accumulation of GABA has a storage role during flooding stress.

  13. The Danish Marine Monitoring System

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ærtebjerg, G.

    1997-01-01

    Indeholder abstracts fra Workshop on Marine Monitoring Systems and Technology, Risø, 17-18 April 1996.......Indeholder abstracts fra Workshop on Marine Monitoring Systems and Technology, Risø, 17-18 April 1996....

  14. FLOOD VULNERABILITY IN BODVA RIVER BASIN IN SLOVAKIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    ZELENAKOVA MARTINA

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available The aim of the paper is to generate a composite map for decision makers using selected factors, mainly of natural character, causing floods. In the analyses, some of the causative factors for flooding in a catchment area are taken into account, such as soil type, precipitation, land use, size of catchment and basin slope. A case study of flood vulnerability identification in the Bodva river basin in eastern Slovakia is employed to illustrate the different approaches. A geographical information system (GIS is integrated with multicriteria analysis (MCA in the paper. The identification of flood vulnerability consists of two basic phases. Firstly, the effective factors causing floods are identified. Secondly several approaches to MCA in a GIS environment are applied and these approaches are evaluated in order to prepared flood vulnerability map.

  15. Swiss Re Global Flood Hazard Zones: Know your flood risk

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vinukollu, R. K.; Castaldi, A.; Mehlhorn, J.

    2012-12-01

    Floods, among all natural disasters, have a great damage potential. On a global basis, there is strong evidence of increase in the number of people affected and economic losses due to floods. For example, global insured flood losses have increased by 12% every year since 1970 and this is expected to further increase with growing exposure in the high risk areas close to rivers and coastlines. Recently, the insurance industry has been surprised by the large extent of losses, because most countries lack reliable hazard information. One example has been the 2011 Thailand floods where millions of people were affected and the total economic losses were 30 billion USD. In order to assess the flood risk across different regions and countries, the flood team at Swiss Re based on a Geomorphologic Regression approach, developed in house and patented, produced global maps of flood zones. Input data for the study was obtained from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) elevation data, Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) and HydroSHEDS. The underlying assumptions of the approach are that naturally flowing rivers shape their channel and flood plain according to basin inherent forces and characteristics and that the flood water extent strongly depends on the shape of the flood plain. On the basis of the catchment characteristics, the model finally calculates the probability of a location to be flooded or not for a defined return period, which in the current study was set to 100 years. The data is produced at a 90-m resolution for latitudes 60S to 60N. This global product is now used in the insurance industry to inspect, inform and/or insure the flood risk across the world.

  16. Unexpected flood loss correlations across Europe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Booth, Naomi; Boyd, Jessica

    2017-04-01

    Floods don't observe country borders, as highlighted by major events across Europe that resulted in heavy economic and insured losses in 1999, 2002, 2009 and 2013. Flood loss correlations between some countries occur along multi-country river systems or between neighbouring nations affected by the same weather systems. However, correlations are not so obvious and whilst flooding in multiple locations across Europe may appear independent, for a re/insurer providing cover across the continent, these unexpected correlations can lead to high loss accumulations. A consistent, continental-scale method that allows quantification and comparison of losses, and identifies correlations in loss between European countries is therefore essential. A probabilistic model for European river flooding was developed that allows estimation of potential losses to pan-European property portfolios. By combining flood hazard and exposure information in a catastrophe modelling platform, we can consider correlations between river basins across Europe rather than being restricted to country boundaries. A key feature of the model is its statistical event set based on extreme value theory. Using historical river flow data, the event set captures spatial and temporal patterns of flooding across Europe and simulates thousands of events representing a full range of possible scenarios. Some known correlations were identified, such as between neighbouring Belgium and Luxembourg where 28% of events that affect either country produce a loss in both. However, our model identified some unexpected correlations including between Austria and Poland, and Poland and France, which are geographically distant. These correlations in flood loss may be missed by traditional methods and are key for re/insurers with risks in multiple countries. The model also identified that 46% of European river flood events affect more than one country. For more extreme events with a return period higher than 200 years, all events

  17. Continuous hydrologic simulation and flood-frequency, hydraulic, and flood-hazard analysis of the Blackberry Creek watershed, Kane County, Illinois

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soong, David T.; Straub, Timothy D.; Murphy, Elizabeth A.

    2006-01-01

    Results of hydrologic model, flood-frequency, hydraulic model, and flood-hazard analysis of the Blackberry Creek watershed in Kane County, Illinois, indicate that the 100-year and 500-year flood plains range from approximately 25 acres in the tributary F watershed (a headwater subbasin at the northeastern corner of the watershed) to almost 1,800 acres in Blackberry Creek main stem. Based on 1996 land-cover data, most of the land in the 100-year and 500-year flood plains was cropland, forested and wooded land, and grassland. A relatively small percentage of urban land was in the flood plains. The Blackberry Creek watershed has undergone rapid urbanization in recent decades. The population and urbanized lands in the watershed are projected to double from the 1990 condition by 2020. Recently, flood-induced damage has occurred more frequently in urbanized areas of the watershed. There are concerns about the effect of urbanization on flood peaks and volumes, future flood-mitigation plans, and potential effects on the water quality and stream habitats. This report describes the procedures used in developing the hydrologic models, estimating the flood-peak discharge magnitudes and recurrence intervals for flood-hazard analysis, developing the hydraulic model, and the results of the analysis in graphical and tabular form. The hydrologic model, Hydrological Simulation Program-FORTRAN (HSPF), was used to perform the simulation of continuous water movements through various patterns of land uses in the watershed. Flood-frequency analysis was applied to an annual maximum series to determine flood quantiles in subbasins for flood-hazard analysis. The Hydrologic Engineering Center-River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) hydraulic model was used to determine the 100-year and 500-year flood elevations, and to determine the 100-year floodway. The hydraulic model was calibrated and verified using high water marks and observed inundation maps for the July 17-18, 1996, flood event. Digital

  18. Computer-controlled radiation monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Homann, S.G.

    1994-01-01

    A computer-controlled radiation monitoring system was designed and installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Multiuser Tandem Laboratory (10 MV tandem accelerator from High Voltage Engineering Corporation). The system continuously monitors the photon and neutron radiation environment associated with the facility and automatically suspends accelerator operation if preset radiation levels are exceeded. The system has proved reliable real-time radiation monitoring over the past five years, and has been a valuable tool for maintaining personnel exposure as low as reasonably achievable

  19. Corrosion Monitoring System

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Dr. Russ Braunling

    2004-10-31

    The Corrosion Monitoring System (CMS) program developed and demonstrated a continuously on-line system that provides real-time corrosion information. The program focused on detecting pitting corrosion in its early stages. A new invention called the Intelligent Ultrasonic Probe (IUP) was patented on the program. The IUP uses ultrasonic guided waves to detect small defects and a Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique (SAFT) algorithm to provide an image of the pits. Testing of the CMS demonstrated the capability to detect pits with dimensionality in the sub-millimeter range. The CMS was tested in both the laboratory and in a pulp and paper industrial plant. The system is capable of monitoring the plant from a remote location using the internet.

  20. Methane Exchange in a Coastal Fen in the First Year after Flooding - A Systems Shift

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hahn, Juliane; Köhler, Stefan; Glatzel, Stephan; Jurasinski, Gerald

    2015-01-01

    Background Peatland restoration can have several objectives, for example re-establishing the natural habitat, supporting unique biodiversity attributes or re-initiating key biogeochemical processes, which can ultimately lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Every restoration measure, however, is itself a disturbance to the ecosystem. Methods Here, we examine an ecosystem shift in a coastal fen at the southern Baltic Sea which was rewetted by flooding. The analyses are based on one year of bi-weekly closed chamber measurements of methane fluxes gathered at spots located in different vegetation stands. During measurement campaigns, we recorded data on water levels, peat temperatures, and chemical properties of peat water. In addition we analyzed the first 20 cm of peat before and after flooding for dry bulk density (DBD), content of organic matter and total amounts of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and other nutrients. Results Rewetting turned the site from a summer dry fen into a shallow lake with water levels up to 0.60 m. We observed a substantial die-back of vegetation, especially in stands of sedges (Carex acutiformis Ehrh). Concentrations of total organic carbon and nitrogen in the peat water, as well as dry bulk density and concentrations of C, N and S in the peat increased. In the first year after rewetting, the average annual exchange of methane amounted to 0.26 ± 0.06 kg m-2. This is equivalent to a 190-times increase in methane compared to pre-flooding conditions. Highest methane fluxes occurred in sedge stands which suffered from the heaviest die-back. None of the recorded environmental variables showed consistent relationships with the amounts of methane exchanged. Conclusions Our results suggest that rewetting projects should be monitored not only with regard to vegetation development but also with respect to biogeochemical conditions. Further, high methane emissions that likely occur directly after rewetting by flooding should

  1. Floods

    Science.gov (United States)

    Floods are common in the United States. Weather such as heavy rain, thunderstorms, hurricanes, or tsunamis can ... is breached, or when a dam breaks. Flash floods, which can develop quickly, often have a dangerous ...

  2. Gas House Autonomous System Monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miller, Luke; Edsall, Ashley

    2015-01-01

    Gas House Autonomous System Monitoring (GHASM) will employ Integrated System Health Monitoring (ISHM) of cryogenic fluids in the High Pressure Gas Facility at Stennis Space Center. The preliminary focus of development incorporates the passive monitoring and eventual commanding of the Nitrogen System. ISHM offers generic system awareness, adept at using concepts rather than specific error cases. As an enabler for autonomy, ISHM provides capabilities inclusive of anomaly detection, diagnosis, and abnormality prediction. Advancing ISHM and Autonomous Operation functional capabilities enhances quality of data, optimizes safety, improves cost effectiveness, and has direct benefits to a wide spectrum of aerospace applications.

  3. The 1966 Flooding of Venice: What Time Taught Us for the Future

    Science.gov (United States)

    Trincardi, Fabio; Barbanti, Andrea; Bastianini, Mauro; Benetazzo, Alvise; Chiggiato, Jacopo; Papa, Alvise; Pomaro, Angela; Sclavo, Mauro; Tosi, Luigi; Umgiesser, Georg

    2017-04-01

    Upon this fiftieth anniversary of the storm that flooded the historical Italian centers of Venice and Florence, we review the event from the perspective of today's scientific knowledge. In particular, we discuss the components of relative sea level rise in Venice that contribute to flooding, the monitoring networks and forecast capabilities that are currently in place, and the engineering actions adopted since the 1966 flood to safeguard the Venice lagoon and the city. Focusing on the meteo-oceanographic aspects, we also show how sheer luck at the time avoided a much worse disaster in Venice. Reference Trincardi, F., A. Barbanti, M. Bastianini, A. Benetazzo, L. Cavaleri, J. Chiggiato, A. Papa, A. Pomaro, M. Sclavo, L. Tosi, and G. Umgiesser. 2016. The 1966 flooding of Venice: What time taught us for the future. Oceanography 29(4), https://doi.org/10.5670/ oceanog.2016.87.

  4. ANALYSIS OF RAINFALL PATTERN AND FLOOD INCIDENCES IN WARRI METROPOLIS, NIGERIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    R. Olanrewaju

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Climate change has led to changes in the known patterns of rainfall and other climatic variables as well as increase in the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters including floods in different parts of the world; and flood is indeed a global environmental issue that had destroyed lives and property amidst other untold hardships. The study examined rainfall characteristics in Warri metropolis for the past 30 years (1986-2015 vis-à-vis the flood situation in the metropolis; as well as the factors responsible and adaptation strategies to flood in the area. Dividing the study area into four zones after Sada (1977, the researchers collected rainfall data from the archives of Nigerian Meteorological Agency; 268 copies of questionnaire and oral interview were used. The result of the correlation analysis performed showed a negative relationship of -0.156 between rainfall and time (years, this implies that rainfall is decreasing over time. The trend line regression equation Y=243.75-0.4572X, confirms that rainfall in Warri Metropolis is decreasing at the rate of -0.45 per year. However, the p-value 0.412 is greater than 0.05, hence, the trend is not statistically significant at 95% level of confidence. It was discovered that rainfall, absence of drainage and poor urban planning practices (as factor 1 contributed 51.09% while overflowing of rivers, blocked/ poor drainage and untarred roads (as factor 2 contributed 44.10% variance to flood occurrence in the metropolis. Recommendations given included continual monitoring and study of rainfall characteristics and other climatic data and dissemination of such information for planning purposes; construction of integrated drainage system and river rechannelisation, legislation against dumping of refuse on roads and drainages; proper urban planning including implementation of the metropolitan urban drainage master plan. 

  5. Probabilistic flood extent estimates from social media flood observations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brouwer, Tom; Eilander, Dirk; Van Loenen, Arnejan; Booij, Martijn J.; Wijnberg, Kathelijne M.; Verkade, Jan S.; Wagemaker, Jurjen

    2017-01-01

    The increasing number and severity of floods, driven by phenomena such as urbanization, deforestation, subsidence and climate change, create a growing need for accurate and timely flood maps. In this paper we present and evaluate a method to create deterministic and probabilistic flood maps from

  6. Probabilistic flood extent estimates from social media flood observations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brouwer, Tom; Eilander, Dirk; Van Loenen, Arnejan; Booij, Martijn J.; Wijnberg, Kathelijne M.; Verkade, Jan S.; Wagemaker, Jurjen

    2017-01-01

    The increasing number and severity of floods, driven by phenomena such as urbanization, deforestation, subsidence and climate change, creates a growing need for accurate and timely flood maps. This research focussed on creating flood maps using user generated content from Twitter. Twitter data has

  7. ICMPv6 RA Flooding Vulnerability Research

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Linas Jočys

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available ICMPv6 is the newest version of internet control message protocol, whose main purpose is to send error message indicating packet processing failure. It is know that ICMPv6 is technologically vulnerable. One of those vulnerabilities is the ICMPv6 RA flooding vulnerability, which can lead to systems in Local Area Network slow down or full stop. This paper will discuss Windows (XP, 7, 8.1 and Linux Ubuntu 14 operating systems resistance to RA flooding attack research and countermeasures to minimize this vulnerability.

  8. Surrogate modeling of joint flood risk across coastal watersheds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bass, Benjamin; Bedient, Philip

    2018-03-01

    This study discusses the development and performance of a rapid prediction system capable of representing the joint rainfall-runoff and storm surge flood response of tropical cyclones (TCs) for probabilistic risk analysis. Due to the computational demand required for accurately representing storm surge with the high-fidelity ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) hydrodynamic model and its coupling with additional numerical models to represent rainfall-runoff, a surrogate or statistical model was trained to represent the relationship between hurricane wind- and pressure-field characteristics and their peak joint flood response typically determined from physics based numerical models. This builds upon past studies that have only evaluated surrogate models for predicting peak surge, and provides the first system capable of probabilistically representing joint flood levels from TCs. The utility of this joint flood prediction system is then demonstrated by improving upon probabilistic TC flood risk products, which currently account for storm surge but do not take into account TC associated rainfall-runoff. Results demonstrate the source apportionment of rainfall-runoff versus storm surge and highlight that slight increases in flood risk levels may occur due to the interaction between rainfall-runoff and storm surge as compared to the Federal Emergency Management Association's (FEMAs) current practices.

  9. Interacting effects of insects and flooding on wood decomposition.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michael D Ulyshen

    Full Text Available Saproxylic arthropods are thought to play an important role in wood decomposition but very few efforts have been made to quantify their contributions to the process and the factors controlling their activities are not well understood. In the current study, mesh exclusion bags were used to quantify how arthropods affect loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L. decomposition rates in both seasonally flooded and unflooded forests over a 31-month period in the southeastern United States. Wood specific gravity (based on initial wood volume was significantly lower in bolts placed in unflooded forests and for those unprotected from insects. Approximately 20.5% and 13.7% of specific gravity loss after 31 months was attributable to insect activity in flooded and unflooded forests, respectively. Importantly, minimal between-treatment differences in water content and the results from a novel test carried out separately suggest the mesh bags had no significant impact on wood mass loss beyond the exclusion of insects. Subterranean termites (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae: Reticulitermes spp. were 5-6 times more active below-ground in unflooded forests compared to flooded forests based on wooden monitoring stakes. They were also slightly more active above-ground in unflooded forests but these differences were not statistically significant. Similarly, seasonal flooding had no detectable effect on above-ground beetle (Coleoptera richness or abundance. Although seasonal flooding strongly reduced Reticulitermes activity below-ground, it can be concluded from an insignificant interaction between forest type and exclusion treatment that reduced above-ground decomposition rates in seasonally flooded forests were due largely to suppressed microbial activity at those locations. The findings from this study indicate that southeastern U.S. arthropod communities accelerate above-ground wood decomposition significantly and to a similar extent in both flooded and unflooded forests

  10. Coolant monitoring systems for PWR reactors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Luzhnov, A.M.; Morozov, V.V.; Tsypin, S.G.

    1987-01-01

    The ways of improving information capacity of existing monitoring systems and the necessity of designing new ones for coolant monitoring are reviewed. A wide research program on development of coolant monitoring systems in PWR reactors is analyzed. The possible applications of in-core and out-of-core detectors for coolant monitoring are demonstrated

  11. Hydrologic and hydraulic flood forecasting constrained by remote sensing data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Y.; Grimaldi, S.; Pauwels, V. R. N.; Walker, J. P.; Wright, A. J.

    2017-12-01

    Flooding is one of the most destructive natural disasters, resulting in many deaths and billions of dollars of damages each year. An indispensable tool to mitigate the effect of floods is to provide accurate and timely forecasts. An operational flood forecasting system typically consists of a hydrologic model, converting rainfall data into flood volumes entering the river system, and a hydraulic model, converting these flood volumes into water levels and flood extents. Such a system is prone to various sources of uncertainties from the initial conditions, meteorological forcing, topographic data, model parameters and model structure. To reduce those uncertainties, current forecasting systems are typically calibrated and/or updated using ground-based streamflow measurements, and such applications are limited to well-gauged areas. The recent increasing availability of spatially distributed remote sensing (RS) data offers new opportunities to improve flood forecasting skill. Based on an Australian case study, this presentation will discuss the use of 1) RS soil moisture to constrain a hydrologic model, and 2) RS flood extent and level to constrain a hydraulic model.The GRKAL hydrological model is calibrated through a joint calibration scheme using both ground-based streamflow and RS soil moisture observations. A lag-aware data assimilation approach is tested through a set of synthetic experiments to integrate RS soil moisture to constrain the streamflow forecasting in real-time.The hydraulic model is LISFLOOD-FP which solves the 2-dimensional inertial approximation of the Shallow Water Equations. Gauged water level time series and RS-derived flood extent and levels are used to apply a multi-objective calibration protocol. The effectiveness with which each data source or combination of data sources constrained the parameter space will be discussed.

  12. Operational flash flood forecasting platform based on grid technology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thierion, V.; Ayral, P.-A.; Angelini, V.; Sauvagnargues-Lesage, S.; Nativi, S.; Payrastre, O.

    2009-04-01

    Flash flood events of south of France such as the 8th and 9th September 2002 in the Grand Delta territory caused important economic and human damages. Further to this catastrophic hydrological situation, a reform of flood warning services have been initiated (set in 2006). Thus, this political reform has transformed the 52 existing flood warning services (SAC) in 22 flood forecasting services (SPC), in assigning them territories more hydrological consistent and new effective hydrological forecasting mission. Furthermore, national central service (SCHAPI) has been created to ease this transformation and support local services in their new objectives. New functioning requirements have been identified: - SPC and SCHAPI carry the responsibility to clearly disseminate to public organisms, civil protection actors and population, crucial hydrologic information to better anticipate potential dramatic flood event, - a new effective hydrological forecasting mission to these flood forecasting services seems essential particularly for the flash floods phenomenon. Thus, models improvement and optimization was one of the most critical requirements. Initially dedicated to support forecaster in their monitoring mission, thanks to measuring stations and rainfall radar images analysis, hydrological models have to become more efficient in their capacity to anticipate hydrological situation. Understanding natural phenomenon occuring during flash floods mainly leads present hydrological research. Rather than trying to explain such complex processes, the presented research try to manage the well-known need of computational power and data storage capacities of these services. Since few years, Grid technology appears as a technological revolution in high performance computing (HPC) allowing large-scale resource sharing, computational power using and supporting collaboration across networks. Nowadays, EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-science in Europe) project represents the most important

  13. Monitoring of Danish marketed solar heating systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ellehauge, K.

    1993-01-01

    The paper describes the monitoring of manufactured solar heating systems for domestic hot water combined with space heating and systems for domestic hot water only. Results from the monitoring of 5 marketed combined systems for domestic hot water and space heating are presented. The systems situated at one family houses at different sites in Denmark have been monitored from January/February 1992. For the detailed monitoring of manufactured systems only for domestic hot water a test facility for simultaneous monitoring of 5 solar heating systems has been established at the Thermal Insulation Laboratory. (au)

  14. Radiation monitor system for nuclear power plants

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wu Bingzhe; Guo Shusheng

    1990-12-01

    The system has 8 kinds of radiation monitors and 2 stage microcomputers designed for processing the data from each monitor, storaging the information, printing out and displaying on the colour CRT. The function of the system includes high-value alarm, warm alarm and failure alarm, so called t hree-level alarms . Two functions of the alarms are the threshold alarm and the tendency alarm, so that this system is an intelligency system. This system has high reliability and very wide range when LOCA accident takes place. It is aseismic and immune to industrial interference. The system can meet IEC-761-1 standard and is of nuclear safety 3rd class. Also the following monitors were designed: 133 Xe monitor, 131 I monitor, low-level liquid monitor and high radiation γ area monitor. The system can meet the requirements of nuclear power plants

  15. Flood Label for buildings : a tool for more flood-resilient cities

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hartmann, T.; Scheibel, Marc

    2016-01-01

    River floods are among the most expensive natural disasters in Europe. Traditional flood protection methods are not sufficient anymore. It is widely acknowledged in the scholarly debate and in practice of flood risk management that traditional flood protection measures such as dikes need to be

  16. Pathways to designing and running an operational flood forecasting system: an adventure game!

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arnal, Louise; Pappenberger, Florian; Ramos, Maria-Helena; Cloke, Hannah; Crochemore, Louise; Giuliani, Matteo; Aalbers, Emma

    2017-04-01

    In the design and building of an operational flood forecasting system, a large number of decisions have to be taken. These include technical decisions related to the choice of the meteorological forecasts to be used as input to the hydrological model, the choice of the hydrological model itself (its structure and parameters), the selection of a data assimilation procedure to run in real-time, the use (or not) of a post-processor, and the computing environment to run the models and display the outputs. Additionally, a number of trans-disciplinary decisions are also involved in the process, such as the way the needs of the users will be considered in the modelling setup and how the forecasts (and their quality) will be efficiently communicated to ensure usefulness and build confidence in the forecasting system. We propose to reflect on the numerous, alternative pathways to designing and running an operational flood forecasting system through an adventure game. In this game, the player is the protagonist of an interactive story driven by challenges, exploration and problem-solving. For this presentation, you will have a chance to play this game, acting as the leader of a forecasting team at an operational centre. Your role is to manage the actions of your team and make sequential decisions that impact the design and running of the system in preparation to and during a flood event, and that deal with the consequences of the forecasts issued. Your actions are evaluated by how much they cost you in time, money and credibility. Your aim is to take decisions that will ultimately lead to a good balance between time and money spent, while keeping your credibility high over the whole process. This game was designed to highlight the complexities behind decision-making in an operational forecasting and emergency response context, in terms of the variety of pathways that can be selected as well as the timescale, cost and timing of effective actions.

  17. Realistic modelling of external flooding scenarios - A multi-disciplinary approach

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Brinkman, J.L.

    2014-01-01

    Extreme phenomena, such as storm surges or high river water levels, may endanger the safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) by inundation of the plant site with subsequent damage on safety-related buildings. Flooding may result in simultaneous failures of safety-related components, such as service water pumps and electrical equipment. In addition, the accessibility of the plant may be impeded due to flooding of the plant environment. These consequences are so severe that, (re)assessments of flood risk and flood protection measures should be based on accurate state-of-the-art methods. Dutch nuclear regulations require that a nuclear power plant shall withstand all external initiating events with a return period lower than one million years. For external flooding, this requirement is the basis of the so-called nuclear design level (nucleair ontwerp peil, NOP) of the buildings for external flooding, i.e. the water level at which a system - among others, the nuclear island and the ultimate heat sink - should still function properly. In determining the NOP, the mean water level, wave height and wave behaviour during storm surges are taken into account. This concept could also be used to implement external flooding in a PSA, by assuming that floods exceeding NOP levels directly lead to core damage. However, this straightforward modelling ignores some important aspects: the first is the mitigating effect of the external flood protection as dikes or dunes; the second aspect is that although water levels lower than NOP will not directly lead to core damage, they could do so indirectly as a result of combinations of system loss by flooding and random failure of required safety systems that have to bring the plant in a safe, stable state. Time is a third aspect: failure mechanisms need time to develop and time (via duration of the flood) determines the amount of water on site. This paper describes a PSA approach that takes the (structural) reliability of the external defences

  18. An integrated, multisensor system for the continuous monitoring of water dynamics in rice fields under different irrigation regimes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiaradia, Enrico Antonio; Facchi, Arianna; Masseroni, Daniele; Ferrari, Daniele; Bischetti, Gian Battista; Gharsallah, Olfa; Cesari de Maria, Sandra; Rienzner, Michele; Naldi, Ezio; Romani, Marco; Gandolfi, Claudio

    2015-09-01

    The cultivation of rice, one of the most important staple crops worldwide, has very high water requirements. A variety of irrigation practices are applied, whose pros and cons, both in terms of water productivity and of their effects on the environment, are not completely understood yet. The continuous monitoring of irrigation and rainfall inputs, as well as of soil water dynamics, is a very important factor in the analysis of these practices. At the same time, however, it represents a challenging and costly task because of the complexity of the processes involved, of the difference in nature and magnitude of the driving variables and of the high variety of field conditions. In this paper, we present the prototype of an integrated, multisensor system for the continuous monitoring of water dynamics in rice fields under different irrigation regimes. The system consists of the following: (1) flow measurement devices for the monitoring of irrigation supply and tailwater drainage; (2) piezometers for groundwater level monitoring; (3) level gauges for monitoring the flooding depth; (4) multilevel tensiometers and moisture sensor clusters to monitor soil water status; (5) eddy covariance station for the estimation of evapotranspiration fluxes and (6) wireless transmission devices and software interface for data transfer, storage and control from remote computer. The system is modular and it is replicable in different field conditions. It was successfully applied over a 2-year period in three experimental plots in Northern Italy, each one with a different water management strategy. In the paper, we present information concerning the different instruments selected, their interconnections and their integration in a common remote control scheme. We also provide considerations and figures on the material and labour costs of the installation and management of the system.

  19. Monitoring system and methods for a distributed and recoverable digital control system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stange, Kent (Inventor); Hess, Richard (Inventor); Kelley, Gerald B (Inventor); Rogers, Randy (Inventor)

    2010-01-01

    A monitoring system and methods are provided for a distributed and recoverable digital control system. The monitoring system generally comprises two independent monitoring planes within the control system. The first monitoring plane is internal to the computing units in the control system, and the second monitoring plane is external to the computing units. The internal first monitoring plane includes two in-line monitors. The first internal monitor is a self-checking, lock-step-processing monitor with integrated rapid recovery capability. The second internal monitor includes one or more reasonableness monitors, which compare actual effector position with commanded effector position. The external second monitor plane includes two monitors. The first external monitor includes a pre-recovery computing monitor, and the second external monitor includes a post recovery computing monitor. Various methods for implementing the monitoring functions are also disclosed.

  20. Measurement of Streaming Potential in Downhole Application: An Insight for Enhanced Oil Recovery Monitoring

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tengku Mohd Tengku Amran

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Downhole monitoring using streaming potential measurement has been developing in order to respond to actual reservoir condition. Most studies have emphasized on monitoring water flooding at various reservoir condition and improving the approaches of measurement. Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR could significantly improve oil recovery and the efficiency of the process should be well-monitored. Alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP flooding is the most promising chemical EOR method due to its synergy of alkaline, surfactant and polymer, which could enhance the extraction of residual oil. However, limited studies have been focused on the application of streaming potential in EOR processes, particularly ASP. Thus, this paper aims to review the streaming potential measurement in downhole monitoring with an insight for EOR application and propose the potential measurement in monitoring ASP flooding. It is important for a preliminary study to investigate the synergy in ASP and the effects on oil recovery. The behaviour of streaming potential should be investigated when the environment of porous media changes with respect to ASP flooding. Numerical model can be generated from the experimental data to forecast the measured streaming potential signal during production associated with ASP flooding. Based on the streaming potential behaviour on foam assisted water alternate gas (FAWAG and water alternate gas (WAG processes, it is expected that the streaming potential could change significantly when ASP flooding alters the environment and surface properties of porous media. The findings could provide new prospect and knowledge in the relationship between streaming potential and ASP mechanisms, which could be a potential approach in monitoring the efficiency of the process.