Forecasting and Communicating Water-Related Disasters in Africa
Abstract
Accurate forecasting and communication of water and water-related hazards in developing regions could save untold lives and property. To this end, the CREST (Coupled Routing and Excess Storage) hydrologic model has been implemented over East Africa, and in dozens of other countries as a user-friendly, flexible, and highly extensible platform for monitoring water resources, floods, droughts, and landslides since 2009. We will present the updated CREST/EF5 hydrologic ensemble modeling framework with new model physics and better forecasts of streamflow, soil moisture, and other hydrologic states to RCMRD (the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development) and SERVIR global hub network. The central goal of this project is to develop an ensemble hydrologic prediction system, forced by weather and climate forecasts in a single continuum, to communicate forecasts on scales ranging from sub-daily to seasonal and in formats designed for better decision making about water and water-related disasters. The CREST/EF5 is a proven performer at getting researcher and officials in emerging regions excited about and confident in their ability to independently monitor, forecast, and understand water and water-related disasters, through a series of training workshops and capacity building activities in USA, Africa, Mesoamerica, and South Asia and is thus particularly well-suited for hydrologic capacity building in emerging countries.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMGC44A..04H
- Keywords:
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- 0426 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 9305 Africa;
- GEOGRAPHIC LOCATIONDE: 1616 Climate variability;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1878 Water/energy interactions;
- HYDROLOGY