Advanced Tools for pro-Active Management of Impacts and Risks Induced by Convective Weather, Heavy Rain and Flash floods in Europe – TAMIR project

The presentation highlights the TAMIR project (2020-2022), its mid-term results, and final objectives.

Hazards created by convective storms and heavy rainfall, e.g. flooding, turn into disasters when and where they encounter exposed and vulnerable societal systems, e.g. human life and activities, assets, and infrastructure. The recent progress in probabilistic multi-source rainfall-induced hazard forecasting has enabled predictions from the nowcast (minutes) to short-medium ranges (5 days), allowing for consistent decision making at both emergency response and planning stages. Nevertheless, civil protection agencies still face challenges that hamper their ability to make active decisions when preparing for emergencies in severe weather situations. The challenges include e.g. high false-alarm rates, lack of multi-hazard forecasts (e.g. the combined effects of heavy rainfall, flood, lightings, wind gusts, hail), difficulties in translating the hazard forecasts into impact forecasts, and inadequate risk assessments. The TAMIR project, funded by the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, addresses these challenges using innovative, state-of-the-art science, and integration of the developed tools and services into existing systems. Experimental additional products are delivered e.g. via the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) platform, part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, and as new information in regional civil protection systems.

In the project, pro-active emergency management is supported by developing forecast products covering different spatial scales (regional to pan-European) and lead times (15 minutes to 5 days). In particular, the project focuses on improving existing products and tools with enhanced impact assessment and preparedness capacity. The uncertainty related to precipitation type in flood forecasts is considered by utilizing a model-based precipitation type estimate to guide the radar-based flood hazard estimate, as snowfall is far less prone to cause severe flood hazard than rainfall. Flash flood hazard forecasting is improved by developing lead-time dependent flood warning thresholds, utilizing the information on precipitation type and the information from gauge adjusted EUMETENET OPERA weather radar composite data and NWP data. Flood risk assessments are improved by combining the flash flood hazard forecasts with enhanced vulnerability and exposure data, covering information about population, transportation infrastructure, energy infrastructure, education facilities and health facilities, and by developing methods to turn the combined information into improved flood rapid risk impact assessments. To account for hazards and risks caused by convective weather, a nowcasting tool for multi-hazards caused by thunderstorms is being developed which combines a cell-based storm nowcast model with a classification model that estimates the hazard level of convective storm situations based on historical data on meteorological observations and the emergency calls they have caused. The multi-hazard nowcasts are again combined with vulnerability layers to produce risk nowcasts for damages from thunderstorms.

Another important aspect of supporting pro-active emergency management is integrating the products and tools developed in the project to operational platforms. Accordingly, the developed products are delivered to end-users utilizing e.g. the EFAS platform and integration into existing civil protection platforms as new web services. This allows for assessing the usefulness of the products and further refinements based on end-user experiences.