Globally consistent, open-source river flood impact model using open data

River floods are amongst the most devastating natural hazards. Reliable information on impeding hydrometeorological events enables humanitarian agencies to take action and to support the efforts of authorities and affected residents. Forecasting the socioeconomic impacts of such events improves focused measures to protect livelihoods. At the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, we develop a globally consistent river flood impact model based on river discharge forecasts by the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) and river flood hazard maps to support the humanitarian community.

 

Daily probabilistic river discharge forecasts of GloFAS are released by the Copernicus Emergency Management Service and can be downloaded from the Copernicus Climate Data Store. Global river flood hazard maps for flood events of different magnitude are available from the Joint Research Centre Data Catalogue of the European Commission. Additionally, the global database of flood protection standards FLOPROS is freely accessible. These open data collections enable the computation of forecasted, globally consistent river flood hazard footprints considering regional protection standards. With these footprints, we compute timely socioeconomic impact forecasts using the open-source, probabilistic impact model CLIMADA.

 

In this presentation, we demonstrate the new river flood module implemented in CLIMADA, which automatically downloads GloFAS data, computes flood footprints, and calculates flood impacts. We further discuss the benefits of impact forecasts for anticipatory action and disaster relief efforts compared to forecasts based on physical hazards alone.