Abstract
Recent surface-water and flash floods have caused millions of pounds worth of damage in the UK. These events form rapidly and are difficult to predict due to their short-lived and localised nature. The interdisciplinary Flooding From Intense Rainfall (FFIR) programme investigated the feasibility of enhancing the integration of an end-to-end forecasting system for flash and surface-water floods to help increase the lead time for warnings for these events. Here we propose developments to the integration of an operational end-to-end forecasting system based on the findings of the FFIR programme. The suggested developments include methods to improve radar-derived rainfall rates and understanding of the uncertainty in the position of intense rainfall in weather forecasts; the addition of hydraulic modelling components; and novel education techniques to help lead to effective dissemination of flood warnings. We make recommendations for future advances such as research into the propagation of uncertainty throughout the forecast chain. We further propose the creation of closer bonds to the end users to allow for an improved, integrated, end-to-end forecasting system that is easily accessible for users and end users alike, and will ultimately help mitigate the impacts of flooding from intense rainfall by informed and timely action.
Highlights
Flooding is one of the leading global natural hazards and can result in loss of life and devastation (e.g., [1])
Other aspects such as the data assimilation of soil moisture and links between land surface modelling and hydrology, researched within the programme (e.g., [30,31])*, are not covered within this article due to the results not directly considering flooding from intense rainfall. This was because the models/data used were not able to represent the small scales at which flooding from intense rainfall occurs
The success of any end-to-end forecasting system relies on the effective communication of warnings, which leads to timely actions which in turn reduce the impacts on lives and property
Summary
Flooding is one of the leading global natural hazards and can result in loss of life and devastation (e.g., [1]). The FFIR programme consists of three components It first considers the meteorological (Forecasting Rainfall exploiting new data Assimilation and Novel observations of Convection: FRANC) and hydrological aspects (Susceptibility of catchments to INTense RAinfall and flooding: SINATRA) separately before combining the results (Towards END-to End flood forecasting and a tool for ReaL-time catchment susceptibilitY: TENDERLY) and considering how the improvements in FRANC and SINATRA feed into the end-to-end forecasting chain. In this manuscript we make recommendations for improving the integration of an end-to-end flood forecasting system based on the work completed during the FFIR programme.
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