Hazard Monitoring at KNMI (Netherlands) By Frank Kroonenberg (crisis coordinator/senior meteorologist at KNMI)

Hazard Monitoring at KNMI (Netherlands)

By Frank Kroonenberg (crisis coordinator/senior meteorologist at KNMI)

18-04-232

Risks from Meteorology and Vulnerability

Small country approx 42.000 km2 with high density of people 495 persons/km2

Initial impact is strongly determined by dynamical initial vulnerabilities such as:

•Density of population and economical activities

•Working or none working days on the calendar

•Traffic rush hours

•Outside festivities

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Hitlist highest impact parameters

1. Meteorological driven hydrological events (River and Coastal floodings)

We are very well protected against this main attack from the weather. High dikes with flooding risk once in 10.000 years for our coastal defence and once in 1.250 years for rivers. Also man made barrières to protect weak spots on our coastal line

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Hit list highest impact parameters

1. Meteorological driven hydrological events (River and Coastal floodings)

We are very well protected against this main attack from the weather. High dikes with flooding risk once in 10.000 years for our coastal defence and once in 1.250 years for rivers

2. Windstorms and wind gusts

Synoptical wind storms accurately predictable at proper lead times,

Wind gusts from convective systems far more difficult to predict. High impact wind events happen once in the one or two years

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Hit list highest impact parameters

1. Meteorological driven hydrological events (River and Coastal floodings)

We are very well protected against this main attack from the weather. High dikes with flooding risk once in 10.000 years for our coastal defence and once in 1.250 years for rivers

2. Windstorms and wind gusts

Synoptical wind storms accurately predictable at proper lead times,

Wind gusts from convective systems far more difficult to predict (high impact wind events 0.5 till 1 per year)

3. Tornadoes are quit rare and not predictable at good lead times. We do not have a Tornado watch or warning system. Return periods for a F1/F2 Tornado is once 10-20 yrs, F3 once 20-30 yrs

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Tornado Borculo 1925

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Hazard monitoring

Hazard monitoring and detecting from obs and by info from CP partners

We do not maintain hazard database or perform hazard mapping or analyses on a routine basis

Main reason: Next to 4 to 7 cases each year with “relatively large” disruption and few casualties, there are hardly any very high impact events

However we do evaluate all orange and red warning cases (4 to 7/yr), not only from a met perspective but combined with impact info from CP partners. This in order to optimise warning thresholds settings. Next to this we use statistical insurance information out of a combination from weather parameter intensities and impact (costs)

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Prevention and repression

Since dynamic part of vulnerability is that important we set warning thresholds, primarily based on climate return periods, but together with CP partnersWe involve CP partners to choose initially between an orange or a red warning (KNMI + impact expert partners)We do have an advanced alerting system towards the Hydro institute with 5 days lead times, when EPS + Expert judgement fcst critical storm surge levels on our coastAlso during critical hydro risk weather, specially trained KNMI meteorologists work at The Water Management Centre Netherlands (WMCN) together with hydrologists to determine the risks and give advisories to the competent authoritiesClimate change studies are taken into account for prevention planning on hydro events defence (higher dikes, water storage areas)

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KNMI Return Period Analysis for Wind gusts (1 + 0.5 /yr)

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Summary and ConclusionsKNMI doesn’t perform natural hazard statistics on a routine basis, by reasons:

We have few very real severe impact events happening

Most of these events are triggered by weather and high initial vulnerability. So only looking at weather parameter intensities, not taking initial vulnerability (which is really complex to do as NMS) into account, makes us possibly look at wrong data for weather impact analysis

What we do:

We do perform evaluations and threshold and impact studies together with CP after every event (for orange and red). In order to learn and to adjust thresholds and procedures every few years

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