Review and guidelines for forecasting flooding from rivers

This project examined the research and produced guidelines to help people choose the right real-time model for forecasting flooding.

From:
Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research and Development Programme and Environment Agency
Published
16 February 2021
Category:
Understanding risks from all sources of flooding
Topics:
Big data, Modelling, Non-stationarity, Understanding physical processes
Project status:
Completed
Project code:
W5C-013/5
Date of completion:
31 March 2005

Documents

Flood forecasting – real-time modelling - technical report (5 MB) PDF

Fluvial flood forecasting for flood warning real-time modelling - summary (2.3 MB) PDF

Review of transfer function modelling for fluvial flood_summary (124 KB) PDF

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Details

This project reviewed previous research into forecasting, such as when and where flooding from rivers might happen. It looked at two primary elements of flood forecasting:

  • measuring and forecasting rainfall
  • the modelling of flooding in real time

The research involved considering:

  • all the approaches currently being used from the simplest to the most complex
  • the uncertainties involved in forecasting - how they can be kept to a minimum
  • the main problems Environment Agency staff report about flood forecasting
  • the technical background to the existing guidelines to real-time modelling

It provided guidelines for people involved in flood forecasting to choose the right model for different types of river, flood plain and catchment, as well as for different purposes. The research also looked at existing gaps in knowledge, and the opportunities for research to fill these gaps.

The project started in 2001 and was completed in 2005.

Updates to this page

Published 16 February 2021
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