Towards the reduction of vulnerability to floods in rural areas.
Suggested is to follow in Q4 Catchment Hydrology as elective.
Students interested in this topic should be those where floods is a common scourge in their areas.
In order to cross-check information, search of real discharge data must be needed.
The student will be interviewed before the acceptance.
GLOFAS is an ensemble of 3 components: A Metrological Model and Forecast (Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) forecasts of the ECMWF IFS), A hydrological model (LISFLOOD) and a web site and interface compiling all the information from where a number of flood related products are expected to be obtained and analysed.
By the time this MSc topic is on, the version 4.0 of GLOFAS might be already online. This version promises a serious increase in the capabilities of GLOFAS, so it could be used as standard resource against floods mainly in developing countries having shortage of information.
The evaluation of the results of the GLOFAS model is done then for an area/s having measured data. The output of the model is contrasted against the official records at the check stations. Under what basin conditions these data is trustable and when it is not, what are the suggestions to compensate errors if possible?.
It is expected that measured data would be enough to report the corrected flood amount (discharges) for different return periods. Return periods are relatively easy to calculate from daily discharge data. Return periods are is a standard product in GLOFAS but they need to be contrsted with the real available.
GLOFAS produces forecasts valid for 30 days, from a specific point in time. The evaluation of this forecast will also be part of the thesis, and it can be done by establishing a review scheme of the GLOFAS forecast information against the real values occurring after the time of the forecast. This can be done due to the duration of the thesis
The objective of this research is to evaluate the advantages, limitations and eventual adaptions to be done over the GLOFAS product for the applicability of its information in selected areas affected by flood and suffering of data scarcity.
The foreseen methodology starts by evaluating the GLOFAS system. GLOFAS stands for Global Flood Awareness System, to support preparatory measures as well as emergency response to predicted and ongoing major flood events at global scale. (Reference Web: https://www.globalfloods.eu/ )
From this evaluation a description of the components and mostly outputs (products) of GLOFAS is expected (see below). From the list of outputs there are a number that will be selected as most relevant for Flood forecast and prevention. Form this list, a subgroup needs to be evaluated and contrasted against real measurements done by Hydrological Organizations.
From this analysis, a good set of recommendation is expected that eventually might limit the use of the dataset in some areas, or better, establish a series of tasks for local organizations in order to adapt the results of GLOFAS to better agreements with the actual reality.