• slider Image
  • slider Image
  • slider Image
  • slider Image
  • slider Image
  • slider Image
  • slider Image
Home > WaterR2B > Sectors > Planning and Construction > How can weather radar help to predict flooding?

How can weather radar help to predict flooding?

The challenge

There is the need for Improvement,  in relation to increased lead times for predicting events, probabilistic forecasting and more accurate local-scale forecasts at a city or town level.

The solution

HYRAD is an advanced weather radar display system for PCs providing real-time receipt of radar and other hydrometeorological products, database and archiving facilities, and a hydrological processing kernel for improved rainfall estimation and forecasting.

The quality-assured software operates as resilient Client-Server system capable of serving hundreds of clients.

Scottish Water use the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology’s HYRAD (HYdrological RADar) system for real-time processing, display and analysis of radar-rainfall data. A particular application has been to support urban storm drainage compliance assessments where the estimated rarity of rainfall events causing surface water (pluvial) flooding can be used to help determine whether a drainage system performed within design specifications or if remedial action is required.

CEH are currently integrating the Flood Estimation Handbook depth-duration-frequency model within HYRAD to allow users to create automated calculations of rainfall rarity and post-event analysis reports. As part of this work, Scottish Water’s entire historical radar archive was processed to provide daily records of radar rainfall return period estimates (rather than just for specific event analysis). For each day, the most extreme (highest return period) rainfall was identified over the last 24 and 48 hours using a range of rainfall durations. This database is being linked to historical flood incident records from customers to assess whether extreme rainfall was a contributing factor.

HYRAD is the standard radar display system used by government agencies for flood warning across England, Wales, Scotland and Belgium.

Resulting benefits

HYRAD provide a real-time reception of weather radar products and other space-time images conforming to a standard format protocol (e.g. fields of potential evaporation, soil moisture, runoff, weather prediction model forecasts of rainfall and temperature). It also is user configured overlays and underlays providing geographical context information, such as raingauge locations, river networks, catchment boundaries and coastlines.

Radar images that are displayed on HYRAD show the precipitation movement and patterns and intensities and are helpful in learning how catchments react to certain rain profiles.

Future directions

CEH are currently integrating the Flood Estimation Handbook depth-duration-frequency model within Hyrad to allow users to create automated calculations of rainfall rarity and post-event analysis reports. Other applications are planned or underway such as hydraulic model verification, pollution event analysis, bathing water quality, linking to pipe bursts, consumption analysis, regulatory reporting, predictive maintenance and use within the control centre to plan day-to-day activities.

Add Pingback

Please leave a comment

Leave a Reply



(Your email will not be publicly displayed.)


Captcha Code

Click the image to see another captcha.