DHI has just started a new Online Flood Forecasting Service for Germany. The service includes at present forecasting of river flow at approximately 200 locations on Danube, Elbe, Rhine, Oder and Weser rivers and on their major tributaries (the figure to the right shows location of available forecasts). New forecasts are issued each hour (24/7/365) for the next 48 hours.
MIKE 11 based forecasting system
The forecasting system has been implemented in close cooperation with Meteomedia, who supplies the meteorological data used as input to the hydrological model in MIKE 11. The hydrological model is used to calculate inflow to the river network from 585 sub-catchments. The river model setup includes modeling of 15,000 km river with 100 river branches located in the entire river-basin areas.
Up to time of forecast, the hydrological model uses hourly input of precipitation and temperature collected from the more than 1500 real time Meteomedia station network (left figure).
In the forecasting period, the model uses hourly input from a 4 km grid based meteorological model (right figure).
In order to obtain the best performance at time of forecast, the model uses a data assimilation routine, where available real time flow information is used in the hydrodynamic model up to time of forecast.
Forecasting on subscription basis
In addition to the river flow forecasts (available for the public) a number forecasting products are available based on subscriptions. These include:
- Inflow forecasting to Reservoirs and Hydro Power stations including production
- Forecasting of water temperature at selected locations
- Regional warning of sub-catchments status
- Flood mapping at selected locations
- Detailed radar based forecasting in local and urban areas
- Water quality forecasting
The figure below shows an example of catchment based warnings for the entire Rhine Basin.
