Research projects

EFFS - European Flood Forecasting System

Hosted by: WL Delft Hydraulics
Keywords: Flood, Flood Risk Management, Forecast, Risk and Safety

Project description

Project duration: 2002 -

PROJECT BACKGROUND
The EFFS project aims at developing a prototype of an European flood forecasting system for 4-10 days in advance. This system provides daily information on potential floods for large rivers such as the rivers Rhine and Oder as well as flash floods in small basins. This flood forecasting system can be used as a pre-warning system to water-authorities that already have a 0-3 day forecasting system.
The system can also provide flood warnings for catchments that at present do not have a forecasting system (Eastern-European countries). The framework of the system will allow incorporation of both detailed models for specific basins as well as a broad scale model for entire Europe. Once designed, the prototype will be tested and evaluated for several months.
Together with end-users, channels to disseminate the forecasts and their uncertainties will be developed.

THE MAIN OBJECTIVES OF THIS PROJECT ARE:
• To take advantage of currently available Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (4 - 10 days) to produce reliable flood warnings beyond the current flood warning period of approximately 3 days.
• To design a Medium-Range Flood Forecasting System for Europe that will produce flood warnings on the basis of the Medium Range Weather Forecasts.
• To produce flood forecasts in regions where at present no flood forecasts are made on the basis of the newly developed system.

The European Flood Forecasting System (EFFS) project contributes to the Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme for Research, Technology development and Demonstration (RTD) under the fifth Framework Programme of the European Commission. More precisely it forms a contribution to Research and Technology Development Activities of a Generic Nature, Fight against Major Natural Hazards with RTD priority Floods and Hydrogeological risks.


Project partners
Institute for inland water management and waste water treatment (www.minvnw.nl/rws/riza/home)
Danish Meteorological Institute (www.dmi.dk)
Global Runoff Data Centre (www.bafg.de)
Deutcher Wetterdienst (www.dwd.de)
Cec-Dg-Joint Research Centre (www.jrc.it)
University of Bolonia (www.unibo.it)
University of Bristol (www.ggy.bris.ac.uk)
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forcasts (www.ecmwf.int)
Lancaster University (www.es.lancs.ac.uk/hfdg/hfdg.html)
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (www.smhi.se)
University of Lubliana
Institute for Hydrology and Meteorology Bucarest (www.meteo.ro)
Institute for Hydrology and Meteorology Sofia (www.meteo.bg)
Slovak University of Technology Bratislava (www.smhu.sk)
Institute of Geology and Geography Vilnius (www.geologin.lt)
VITUKI Plc. Water Resources Institute Budapest (www.vituki.hu)
Slovak Institute for Hydrology and Meteorology (www.shmu.sk)
Institute of Meteorology and Water Management Wroclaw Branch (www.imgw.pl)

Source of text, figures and links: Website of the Coastal Union Germany

More information (external link to the project)

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