Hydrological modelling of the extreme flooding event of July 2021

The flooding event of July 2021 is a natural disaster that resulted in fatalities and extensive damage to infrastructure. The flood was triggered by the extreme precipitation event of 13-16 July 2021. We investigate it for a selection of catchments of the Meuse River in Belgium using hydrological modelling and forecasting. 

We make use of a high resolution radar-based quantitative precipitation estimation of the event (RADFLOOD21), generated at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium. This dataset is used to perform simulations with the hydrological model SCHEME in order to analyze the hydrometeorological conditions responsible for the flooding. Hydrological reforecasts are also performed, using the RADFLOOD21 data for initialization and precipitation hindcasts as input to a hydrological prediction system. Precipitation hindcasts are provided by numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, including the ECMWF ENS ensemble predictions. The main goal of the study is to evaluate the model and forecasting system performance in terms of river discharge for this exceptional precipitation event, and to investigate the impact of the new input data.