The HYPE model has been used in several environmental assessments and is also incorporated in various user-oriented tools. Here we show some examples of HYPE usefulness in specific user oriented projects.
JBA and Flood Foresight
About JBA Consulting
Headquartered in North Yorkshire, UK and with more than 20 offices globally, JBA Consulting has grown to be leading specialists in environmental engineering, flood risk management and environmental management. JBA’s teams of data scientists, environmental consultants, software developers, designers and engineers have, for more than 25 years, developed some of the most advanced techniques and pioneering innovations that deliver impact, added-value and efficiencies for their clients. JBA works across many key service areas, promoting innovation, efficiency and sustainability across several sectors, including infrastructure and asset management, climate resilience and environmental management, government and regulatory, sustainable development, transport and utilities, and humanitarian sectors.
Flood Foresight
Flood Foresight, a JBA product, is a globally-scalable operational system providing data on rainfall severity, flood event footprints (extent and depth), and flood event impact data. Designed to be compatible with existing business intelligence and decision support tools, Flood Foresight supports operational flood management in the infrastructure, insurance, utilities and civil contingencies sectors. The forecasts produced by Flood Foresight allow users from a range of sectors to take a more proactive approach to managing unfolding flood events. These include flood risk management authorities, insurance and reinsurance companies, transportation authorities and humanitarian organizations.
“Hypeweb data have allowed us to develop a consistent, reliable and scalable commercial data service to a broad range of users that depend on reliable flood event information, ranging from local flood risk authorities to national transportation authorities across Europe.”
“SMHI supplies us with Hypeweb data at a resolution and frequency that are compatible with our modelling platforms. Therefore, we can provide our clients with robust, automated solutions that fit into their workflows, thus promoting their proactive management of flood events.”
– Dr John Bevington, Technical Director, JBA Consulting
Challenge
Flood Foresight datasets are updated at up to three hours’ frequency and allow rapid loss estimation for current and forecast flood states, supporting decision-making before, during and after major flood events. Having a reliable and robust input data source is critical. In order to produce reliable and dependable flood event information, Flood Foresight uses the best available data for input to the system. Data provided by SMHI allows forecast flood footprints to be created at forecast lead times of up to 10-days in a consistent manner across the UK, Ireland and continental Europe.
Applications
SMHI Hypeweb data are combined with JBA’s Global Flood Maps within the Flood Foresight software to create forecast flood footprints, showing flood depths and inundation extents. JBA make use of both the real time forecast stream flow data, and also the historical stream flow reanalysis based on the ERA Interim dataset. This allows JBA to determine the relative rarity of the forecast stream flows, and production of the most appropriate inundation and impact scenario from a library of flood data held within Flood Foresight.
Results
Forecast flood footprints are generated daily, 365 days per year, with up to a 10-day lead time across the UK and Ireland, with the potential for similar products covering the whole of Europe in a consistent manner. Users benefit from insight and early warning into which assets or populations are in locations most likely to experience flooding in the coming hours or days.
There is increasing demand for hydrological forecasting data services globally, particularly to underpin early warning systems and risk financing schemes supporting humanitarians, development organisation and (re)insurance sectors.
VISIT SITES: FLOOD FORESIGHT
Operational flood forecasting and alerts in West Africa
World-wide HYPE forecasts are currently tested in operational warning production for west Africa, where SMHI leads an initiative to implement an operational service shared by 17 countries. Flooding is a rapidly growing concern in the region that often it leads to the loss of human lives, livestock, crops and damages to infrastructure. Annual flood is blessing for flood-dependent agriculture, but only if the planting is synchronised to the upcoming flood. The region would benefit from a reliable access to operational flood forecasts and alerts produced by a solid information and communication technology adapted to regional conditions operated by West African institutions. The project FANFAR (Grant No 780118) is implementing this to enhance the regional capacity of West Africa to forecast, alert for and manage floods.
VISIT SITE: FANFAR
Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S)
Results from the models E-HYPE and World-Wide HYPE are used in operational climate services. SMHI have produced open data on seasonal forecasts and climate impacts in three contacts to the Climate Data Store of ECMWF, who operates the C3S on behalf of the European Union. The proof-of-concept for a Service for Water Indicators in Climate Change Adaptation (C3S_441_Lot1_SMHI) illustrates important components for a service at the European scale, while the Global users in the Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S_422_Lot1_SMHI) show the global impacts and user up-take in 19 case-studies worldwide.
In a current contract (C3S_424_Lot1_SMHI) we develop an operational service for the European water sector.
Advancing quality of hydroclimate services for Europe
Several HYPE applications are used as demonstrators in on-going research and development projects to train users and collect feedback on existing services. Some examples are given below:
- The interactive maps and graphs from Hypeweb for climate change in Europe were used by European collaborative project AQUACLEW (ERA4CS Grant 690462), to improve the co-creation process, data tailoring and evaluation metrics when developing climate services.
- The seasonal forecasts from Hypeweb were used by the EU H2020 projects IMPREX (Grant No 641811) and CLARA (Grant No 730482) when communicating usefulness and skills of seasonal forecasts with users. IMPREX brings together 23 partners from 9 countries and CLARA 10 partners from across Europe. Train your forecast-based decision-making with the Call For Water Game.
VISIT SITE: CLARA –CALL FOR WATER GAME
Nutrient Inflow To The Baltic Sea
The HYPE climate-change impact data for Europe has been further refined to assess the impact of various scenarios, combining the effects of societal evolution and measure programmes for nutrient reduction in the Baltic Sea. The Baltic is suffering from eutrophication and surrounding countries have agreed on collaborative efforts so save the sea. Several research projects have used the HYPE data to explore and communicate results with policy makers in the region. The results presented here were produced (2018) with funding from BONUS, the joint Baltic Sea research and development programme (Art 185) and national research councils, through SOILS2SEA and MIRACLE projects, each one embracing 5-10 research institutes in the region.
VISIT SITE: NUTRIENT INFLOW TO THE BALTIC SEA
Climate impacts on European reservoirs
The HYPE climate change impact data for Europe have been updated to include the effects of sediments. Changes in precipitation and temperature also affect erosion and the amount of sediments that reach rivers and lakes or reservoirs. Large amount of sediments remain in the reservoirs, affecting available storage of water and downstream flows. The result presented here were produced in 2023 with funding from AXIS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate (Grant No. 776608).
