Flood Forecasting in the UKCurrent Practice and Future Aspirations

Name: Stuart HyslopFlood Forecasting AdvisorSensing in Water , 23rd September 2015

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Reducing the impacts of floodingProvide advance warning to staff, professionalpartners and the general publicIssue flood warnings in advance of flooding fromrivers, the sea and groundwaterInform decision making for deploying temporarydefences, operating flood alleviation schemes,closing roads and other critical assets

Flood WarningTargeted at individual communities

Threshold based service

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Flood Alert:Flooding is possible, beprepared

Flood Warning:Flooding is expected,immediate action required

Severe Flood Warning:Severe flooding, danger tolife.

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Monitoring Network4500 locations acrossEngland

1050 Rain gauges1300 River flow2000 River level

Flood forecasting needs…High resolutionNear real-time availabilityFull range and highly resilient

Measuring the extremes

Essential services:electricity andcommunicationsChoice of siteResilient designAccessibility toresolve faults?

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Weather Radar

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?

Weather Forecasting...“Tuesday, showers, locally heavy and perhapsthundery. Drier and brighter for Wednesdaywith lighter winds”

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Bringing it all together...

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Forecast Models

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Getting the message out

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Challenges AheadDelivering improved levels of service to a widercustomer base, with fewer resourcesHighly mobile, and increasingly demanding customersAll sources of flooding?A changing climate?

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Radar-Raingauge Merging

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Processing, display and Management

Replacement forecasting platform due 2017Increased volume of dataBetter links with data gathering and disseminationsystemsAutomation of simple data handling tasksFree up time for forecasters to add value

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Developing Probabilistic ForecastingCoastal forecasting already available (2013)Exploring a greater range of potentialscenarios for river floodingCommunicating risk and uncertainty tocustomers?

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SummaryData intensive – reliant timely delivery of highquality data in challenging conditionsMethods of sharing information must keeppace with a changing societyNew technology can help improve efficiencyand offer new outlooks, but key forecaster rolein interpretation and sharing of forecasts

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