Utilization of Weather Radar Data for the Flash Flood Indicator Application in the Czech Republic

In the past few years, demands on flash flood forecasting have grown. The Flash Flood Indicator (FFI) is a system used at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute for the evaluation of the risk of possible occurrence of flash floods over the whole Czech Republic. The FFI calculation is based on the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRemote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 13; no. 16; p. 3184
Main Authors Novák, Petr, Kyznarová, Hana, Pecha, Martin, Šercl, Petr, Svoboda, Vojtěch, Ledvinka, Ondřej
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.08.2021
Subjects
Algorithms
Coefficients
flash flood nowcasting
Flash floods
Flood forecasting
Floods
hydrological modeling
Hydrology
Hydrometeorology
Mathematical analysis
Meteorological radar
Precipitation
quantitative precipitation estimates
Radar
Radar data
Radar networks
Rain
Rain gauges
Rainfall
Reliability analysis
remote sensing
Risk assessment
Saturated soils
Weather forecasting
weather radar
Czech Republic
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Summary:In the past few years, demands on flash flood forecasting have grown. The Flash Flood Indicator (FFI) is a system used at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute for the evaluation of the risk of possible occurrence of flash floods over the whole Czech Republic. The FFI calculation is based on the current soil saturation, the physical-geographical characteristics of every considered area, and radar-based quantitative precipitation estimates (QPEs) and forecasts (QPFs). For higher reliability of the flash flood risk assessment, calculations of QPEs and QPFs are crucial, particularly when very high intensities of rainfall are reached or expected. QPEs and QPFs entering the FFI computations are the products of the Czech Weather Radar Network. The QPF is based on the COTREC extrapolation method. The radar-rain gauge-combining method MERGE2 is used to improve radar-only QPEs and QPFs. It generates a combined radar-rain gauge QPE based on the kriging with an external drift algorithm, and, also, an adjustment coefficient applicable to radar-only QPEs and QPFs. The adjustment coefficient is applied in situations when corresponding rain gauge measurements are not yet available. A new adjustment coefficient scheme was developed and tested to improve the performance of adjusted radar QPEs and QPFs in the FFI.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs13163184