Flood Prediction in the Americas
Abstract
Floods are a recurring disaster that causes loss of life and property across the Caribbean region as a result of extreme weather conditions. This area is in the major corridor of tropical storms and hurricanes, and these events unfortunately occur frequently with an average of about nine named storms and six hurricanes per year. Several sectors of the national economies like agriculture and tourism are severely affected with each major event. To complicate matters, settlements in the floodplains, and increased urbanization as a result of population growth add to the vulnerability in the region. Disaster and risk management agencies have to plan preparedness, mitigation, and response measures to face these challenges, often with limited resources. A flood prediction system provides important information for the development of these flood preparedness and mitigation plans, and has the potential to save lives and reduce damage to property. In response, we have used the global forecasts of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to develop a high-density streamflow prediction system, and a number of web applications that further process the forecasts and present results as intelligent hydrographs, and dynamic flood maps. The HydroViewer App is a web application designed to visualize and monitor streamflow as part of the prediction system. This app allows for customizations so that different countries can rebrand and adjust the app according to their needs, allowing this effort to be replicated in any country in the Americas. Additional advantages of these applications are their easy way to retrieve and integrate data from other sources; the availability of different deployment alternatives with light-weight applications that rely on the use of APIs as opposed to incurring into heavy computations; and the increasing ease for data validation by incorporating observed data and performing comparisons using validation tools developed for this purpose.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGC11H1001N
- Keywords:
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- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 4323 Human impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS