VLab Forum Members,
One last reminder that the January 2024 VLab Forum will occur
today, the 24th, at 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Eastern Time). The talk
features a presentation by David Vallee titled "Implementation
of Forecast Flood Inundation Mapping Services for the Nation".
We hope you can attend.
To participate in the forum, please register
for the webinar.
Abstract:
The NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) has a mission to provide
weather, water and climate data, forecasts, warnings, and
impact-based decision support services for the protection of life
and property and enhancement of the national economy. Emergency
Management partners across the nation have expressed a critical need
for the provision of more detailed flood forecasts and for
event-driven flood inundation mapping (FIM) as a high value source
of actionable information to prepare, mitigate, and respond to flood
impacts. In response, the NWS National Water Center, in coordination
with River Forecast Centers (RFC) and Weather Forecast Offices (WFO)
and Federal and academic partners, has developed high-resolution
inundation modeling capabilities providing geo-referenced
visualizations of forecast flooding extent at the continental scale.
In support of Department of Commerce agency goals to mitigate flood
impacts, the NWS’s Office of Water Prediction demonstrated a novel
real-time Flood Inundation Mapping (FIM) capability, first for the
state of Texas and later for the Northeast. This capability uses
synthetic or USGS rating curves to estimate river stage from the
forecast streamflow, and applies the Height Above Nearest Drainage
(HAND) method to produce a map showing forecast inundation extents.
The NWS FIM methods deploy a model agnostic approach to map the
inundation with 10-meter horizontal resolution for rivers and
streams in the National Hydrography Dataset network. The use of
synthetic rating curves and the application of the Height Above
Nearest Drainage method allow projection of the water surface
elevation in the channel to neighboring cells in the digital terrain
model. The inundation extent determination uses forecast streamflow
from the National Water Model (NWM) and from NWS River Forecast
Centers (RFCs).
Over the next 4 years, NOAA will revolutionize water prediction
capabilities by providing event-driven high spatial resolution
forecast FIM services for nearly 100% of the U.S. population,
covering over 3 million miles of the national stream network. This
information represents a profound expansion in the actionable
information available to the public, emergency managers, and the
weather enterprise community including broadcast meteorologists.
This session will highlight these demonstrations, explore the new
forecast inundation services, and will present the initial rollout
of services to 10% of the nation which commenced on September 26th,
2023 for areas in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Texas. FIM
services include an hourly updated analysis FIM and 5-day forecast
FIM driven by the official NWS RFC and NWM streamflow predictions.
Agenda:
You can find the agenda for the Forum at the following link:
Slides:
You can find the slides for the Forum at the following link:
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