David Maidment - The National Flood Interoperability Experiment: Leveraging Partnerships to explore the future of flood forecasting

The National Flood Interoperability Experiment: Leveraging Partnerships to explore the future of flood forecasting

David R. Maidment Center for Research in Water Resources

University of Texas at Austin

Edward Clark National Water Center

NOAA/National Weather Service

Vision:

Scientific excellence and innovation driving water prediction and decisions for a water-resilient nation.

Mission:

The NWC collaboratively researches, develops and delivers state-of-the science, National hydrologic analyses, forecast information, data, decision-support services and guidance to support and inform essential emergency services and water management decisions.

Through partnerships, it integrates and supports consistent water prediction activities from global to local levels.

2

National Water Center

7/21/2015 PRE- 3 Inaugural Meeting May, 2014

The Email Proposed by Dr. Maidment: A real-time flood inundation and mapping

facility running for the CONUS in a demonstration mode

Leverage a number of existing tools and techniques

Couple targeted academic curricula with new data sets/ accessible services

Develop new GIS tools with private sector partners

Hold a student hack-a-thon Summer Institute

a stretch goal to explore what some aspects of a Common Operating Picture and GeoIntelligence laboratory could be, and also make more real some elements of a National Water Data Infrastructure

Why People

On Average, more people die annually from flooding than from

any other form of natural disaster

Spatial Distribution of

Flood Fatalities 2007-2013 (source: NWS StormDat)

Low water crossing

Goals

National Flood Interoperability Experiment

Close the gap between national flood forecasting and local emergency response

- Impact at the street level

Explore real-time flood information services

- Shared among organizations, geographies, people

Engage academic community through the National Water Center

- Innovation for transformative change

- Glimpse the future of hydrologic forecasting

Partnership with the academic research

community

National Weather Service has joined with CUAHSI to

conduct a one-year National Flood Interoperability

Experiment (NFIE)

Includes a Summer Institute for students and faculty

at the National Water Center, June 1 to July 17, 2015

Forecasts produced by River Forecasts

- Current system 3600 locations

- Future 2.67 million locations

New Information to help emergency managers

to save lives and keep people safe

700 times more

Current Proposed

Why Transform the NOAA and NWS Forecasting paradigm

NFIE Goal: Connect National Scale Flood Modeling with Local emergency planning and response

1. How can near-real-time hydrologic simulations at high spatial resolution, covering the nation, be carried out using the NHDPlus or next generation hydro-fabric (e.g. data structure for hillslope, watershed scales)?

2. How can this lead to improved emergency response and community resilience?

3. How can an improved interoperability framework support the first two goals and lead to sustained innovation in the research to operations process?

Normal Medium High

Flood Risk Condition Status

Thanks to so many who contributed

NFIE Summer Institute students youre the best!

Don Cline, Ed Clark, National Weather Service

Emily Clark and Rick Hooper, CUAHSI

Andy Ernest, Sagy Cohen, Sarah Praskievicz, Joseph

Gutenson, Univ. of Alabama

Marcelo Somos Valenzuela and Fernando Salas, Univ.

of Texas

Kristin Tolle and Prashant Dhingra, Microsoft Research

Jim Nelson, BYU and Ray Idaszak, UNC

David Tarboton, Utah State and Barbara Minsker,

UIUC

Flood Disaster in Texas, May 2015

Enough rain to cover entire state in 8 of water

70 Texas counties declared flood disaster areas by the state

More than 30 flood deaths, other people are still missing

Swift water rescue

Transformative Research (NSF)

Transformative research involves ideas, discoveries, or tools that radically change our understanding of an important existing scientific or engineering concept or educational practice or leads to the creation of a new paradigm or field of science, engineering, or education. Such research challenges current understanding or provides pathways to new frontiers.

http://www.nsf.gov/about/transformative_research/definition.jsp

How to move from evolutionary change

to transformative change?

Goal of the Experiment

Close the gap between National Flood Forecasting

and Local Emergency Response

Demonstrate forecasting of flood impacts at stream and street level

National

Local

Weather and Hydrology

National Weather Service and federal agencies

National Water Center

River Flooding and Emergency Response

Local, State and Regional Agencies

Citizens

NFIE Conceptual Framework

NFIE-Services: Web services for flood information

NFIE-Geo:

National

geospatial

framework for

hydrology

NFIE-Hydro:

National high

spatial resolution

hydrologic

forecasting

NFIE-River: River

channel information

and real-time flood

inundation mapping

NFIE-Response:

Wide area planning

for flood

emergency

response

NHDPlus Version 2

National Elevation Dataset

National Hydrography Dataset

National Land Cover Dataset

Watershed Boundary Dataset

NHDPlus

Geospatial foundation for a national water data infrastructure

2.67 million reach catchments in US

average area 3 km2

reach length 2 km

Uniquely labelled

NFIE-Geo for National Flood Interoperability Experiment

Enhanced geospatial database for a national water data infrastructure

NWS Basins and

Forecast Points

USGS Water Watch

Points

National Flood

Hazard Layer

NHDPlus

Feature classes:

Subwatershed (HUC12)

Catchment

Flowline

Waterbody

Streamgage

NFIE-Geo 9 feature classes

5 from NHDPlus

4 from IWRSS

NFIE-Geo for Travis and Williamson

Counties 500 catchments per county

National Flood Interoperability Experiment

Why? People

Low water

crossing on

Bear Creek

2 AM, 18 Sept 2014

Deputy Hollis and Flood Information

NHDPlus contains a catchment

for Bear Creek

An operational NFIE forecasting system

could have helped her

500,000 processors operating in parallel

21

High Performance Computing: Stampede

1.2 million gallon cooling tank

NFIE-Hydro Forecasting Model

Runoff

Streamflow

RAPID flow routing (for continental US)

Probabilistic flood forecasts Weather model and forecasts (HRRR)

Land-Atmosphere Model (NOAH-MP)

Precipitation Weather

Catchment-

level forecasts

Computed for the continental US in 10 minutes at Texas Advanced Computing Center

WRF-Hydro

Ensemble of 50 flood forecasts

Probability of Flooding on Shoal Ck, Austin, Tx

ECMWF-

RAPID

flow

forecasts

Deterministic

flood maps

Probabilistic

flood maps

HEC-RAS

model

Rating

curves

library

Transformative for the nation

Forecasts produced by

- Current system 6000 locations

- NFIE system 2.67 million locations

New Information to help emergency managers save

lives and keep people safe

400 times more

Current Proposed in NFIE

Connecting with Local Decision Makers

Work with the first response

community to improve pre-

planning and flood operations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ympaR6YUxiA&feature=youtube

Harry Evans

Austin Fire Dept