Abstract
Abstract. This paper presents the development of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS), which aims at increasing preparedness for floods in trans-national European river basins by providing local water authorities with medium-range and probabilistic flood forecasting information 3 to 10 days in advance. The EFAS research project started in 2003 with the development of a prototype at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), in close collaboration with the national hydrological and meteorological services. The prototype covers the whole of Europe on a 5 km grid. In parallel, different high-resolution data sets have been collected for the Elbe and Danube river basins, allowing the potential of the system under optimum conditions and on a higher resolution to be assessed. Flood warning lead-times of 3–10 days are achieved through the incorporation of medium-range weather forecasts from the German Weather Service (DWD) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), comprising a full set of 51 probabilistic forecasts from the Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) provided by ECMWF. The ensemble of different hydrographs is analysed and combined to produce early flood warning information, which is disseminated to the hydrological services that have agreed to participate in the development of the system. In Part 1 of this paper, the scientific approach adopted in the development of the system is presented. The rational of the project, the system�s set-up, its underlying components, basic principles and products are described. In Part 2, results of a detailed statistical analysis of the performance of the system are shown, with regard to both probabilistic and deterministic forecasts.
Highlights
Over the last decades severe fluvial floods with a transnational dimension have taken place in Europe, such as the Rhine-Meuse floods in 1993 and 1995, the Oder floods in 1997, and the Po floods in 1994 and 2000
This paper presents the development of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS), which aims at increasing preparedness for floods in trans-national European river basins by providing local water authorities with mediumrange and probabilistic flood forecasting information 3 to 10 days in advance
Flood warning lead-times of 3–10 days are achieved through the incorporation of medium-range weather forecasts from the German Weather Service (DWD) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), comprising a full set of 51 probabilistic forecasts from the Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) provided by ECMWF
Summary
Over the last decades severe fluvial floods with a transnational dimension have taken place in Europe, such as the Rhine-Meuse floods in 1993 and 1995, the Oder floods in 1997, and the Po floods in 1994 and 2000. The repetitive occurrence of such disastrous floods prompts the investigation of new strategies for flood prevention and protection, with focus on coordinated actions among countries sharing the same river basin. Preventive measures such as the construction of reservoirs, polders or dykes, aimed at reducing the impact of floods, have high priority for the national water authorities. In Europe, the EFFS1 project (2000–2003) was one of the first large European research projects to look into the potential of using medium-range weather forecasts, including EPS, for flood forecasting in large trans-national river basins, with the aim of extending the early warning time (de Roo et al, 2003, Gouweleeuw et al, 2004). In Part 2 (Bartholmes et al, 2009) the performance of the pre-operational EFAS system is analysed for a two-year period
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