Application of an Early Warning System for Floods

Abstract

Nowadays real time flood forecasting is becoming an important issue as climate changes make quite inefficient those traditional flood forecasting methods based only on historical data. Furthermore, real time flood forecasting systems are often limited to developed countries and difficult to find in developing countries where more than three-quarters of the world’s population are living. In this context, the development of an early warning system for floods able to provide global coverage is very important. The aim of this paper is to show the improvements introduced in the Early Warning System for Floods, developed by ITHACA organization, i.e. mainly the calculation of those morphometric parameters necessary to understand the basin response to heavy rainfalls and the source Real Time data adjustment necessary to run the detection of critical rainfalls in near real time. This completely automated System runs in river basin scale having a global coverage by using 3B42 and 3B42RT satellite rainfall data products of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The 3-hourly 3B42 data from 1998 to 2007 are used to detect all historical flood events in the past 10 years using a hydrological method based on Depth Duration Frequency curves. The 3-hourly real time 3B42RT data with some statistical adjustments are used to detect critical rainfall events and to make alerts in near real time.