Abstract
Abstract. The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) have run a national flood forecasting and warning service since 1989. In 2009, the directorate was given the responsibility of also initiating a national forecasting service for rainfall-induced landslides. Both services are part of a political effort to improve flood and landslide risk prevention. The Landslide Forecasting and Warning Service was officially launched in 2013 and is developed as a joint initiative across public agencies between NVE, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET), the Norwegian Public Road Administration (NPRA) and the Norwegian Rail Administration (Bane NOR). The main goal of the service is to reduce economic and human losses caused by landslides. The service performs daily a national landslide hazard assessment describing the expected awareness level at a regional level (i.e. for a county and/or group of municipalities). The service is operative 7 days a week throughout the year. Assessments and updates are published at the warning portal http://www.varsom.no/ at least twice a day, for the three coming days. The service delivers continuous updates on the current situation and future development to national and regional stakeholders and to the general public. The service is run in close cooperation with the flood forecasting service. Both services are based on the five pillars: automatic hydrological and meteorological stations, landslide and flood historical database, hydro-meteorological forecasting models, thresholds or return periods, and a trained group of forecasters. The main components of the service are herein described. A recent evaluation, conducted on the 4 years of operation, shows a rate of over 95 % correct daily assessments. In addition positive feedbacks have been received from users through a questionnaire. The capability of the service to forecast landslides by following the hydro-meteorological conditions is illustrated by an example from autumn 2017. The case shows how the landslide service has developed into a well-functioning system providing useful information, effectively and on time.
Highlights
Warning systems (EWSs) have been defined by UN/ISDR (2009) as “a set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities and organization, threatened by a hazard to prepare and to act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce losses”
New thresholds have been defined for two regions: Southern Norway and Eastern Norway (Fig. 2b–c), both where many false alarms were sent in recent years based on the national thresholds
The second evaluation was conducted among a working group, with personnel from NVE, Meteorological Institute (MET), Norwegian Public Road Administration (NPRA), Bane NOR, and a county emergency office, that was assigned to carry out an evaluation of the snow avalanche and landslide forecasting service (Hisdal et al, 2017)
Summary
Warning systems (EWSs) have been defined by UN/ISDR (2009) as “a set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities and organization, threatened by a hazard to prepare and to act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce losses”. The existing operative services around the world focus on prediction, warning and sending alarm to the population about possible occurrence of fast-moving landslides, usually shallow, which are triggered by intense rainfall and/or snowmelt These landslides fall in the category of flow-type landslides (Hungr et al, 2001) like debris flows, debris flood, debris avalanches, but translational or rotational debris and soil slides can be observed (Hungr et al, 2014). As for the majority of territorial systems described in Calvello (2017) and Piciullo et al (2018), the Norwegian one, presented is managed by a governmental institution that uses warning dissemination tools to warn multiple weather-induced hazards, including floods and snow avalanches. We present some feedbacks from regional and local emergency authorities on the usefulness of this new service
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