Web-Based Natural Dam-Burst Flood Hazard Assessment and ForeCasting SysTem (WeACT)

Catastrophic floods resulting from the failure of dams that impound glacier lakes are known as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). A hydrodynamically similar natural hazard is caused by the failure of a river dam that has been formed by a landslide. GLOFs and landslide dam-burst floods, jointly termed natural dam-burst floods (NDBFs), have been recognised as one of the most serious natural hazards in populated mountainous regions across the globe. Of all South Asia countries, Nepal is subject to some of the highest national-level socio-economic impacts from natural dam-burst floods (NDBFs), threatening thousands of people, hundreds of villages and basic infrastructure downstream. Therefore, it is imperative that a national capacity is developed for increasing awareness, early warning, and risk mitigation for NDBFs. Although the Nepalese Government has been actively seeking to reduce and mitigate the NDBF risks, effective early warning and risk mitigation strategies are still lacking across the country. Early warning systems have recently been developed and implemented in various global locations for NDBFs. However, the potential of the latest remote sensing and high-performance flood modelling technologies has yet to be adequately explored and exploited in the existing NDBF monitoring and early warning systems.

In short, there is an urgent societal need to develop reliable NDBF hazard risk assessment, forecasting and warning tools to improve preparedness and build resilience at the community level; and there is a clear research gap in exploiting the latest monitoring and modelling technologies to support practical NDBF risk mitigation applications. To meet the societal need and fill the current research gap, the overarching aim of WeACT is to exploit recent contemporary advances in EO and high-performance dam-break flood modelling to innovate a web-based NDBF hazard assessment and forecasting system to improve community flood preparedness and resilience in Nepal. Although the proposed project has a focus case study in Nepal (the 3,400 km2 Sun Kosi catchment), the developed methods and tools will be transferable to other mountainous countries in South Asia or cross the globe that are suffering from NDBFs.

WeACT will improve community-level preparedness and resilience to natural dam-burst floods (NDBFs) in Nepal through the development of an innovative web-based hazard assessment and forecasting tool. Impact and knowledge exchange will evolve with the progress of the project. The established researcher-stakeholder-community alliance and representative advisory board (RAB) will play a key role in delivering the project impact. Our in-country partners, ICIMOD and Tribhuvan University, will adopt the research outcomes to support their research. ICIMOD will be able to extend the research impact to other South Asian countries and influence hazard risk mitigation policies through its influential research, training and application programmes.

Who might benefit from this research?
Taking advantages of the recent contemporary advances in earth observation and high-performance flood modelling, WeACT will create a rich source of knowledge products in the form of datasets from different sources (i.e. communities, field survey and earth observation), numerical tools together with the associated modelling outputs, and a web-based NDBF hazard assessment and forecasting tool. The research will have a wide range of beneficiaries including:
- At risk communities in the case study site (i.e. Sun Koshi catchment, Nepal);
- Local/regional stakeholders in disaster risk mitigation (local governments, community leaders, disaster inspectors, NGOs, business people, etc.);
- Stakeholders in risk mitigation/resilience to other forms of hazard in Nepal, with reciprocity of learning to the UK;
- Disaster management organisations in South Asia;
- In-country project partners (i.e. Tribhuvan University and ICIMOD);
- Interdisciplinary researchers in NDBF and other natural hazards research, including community-based hazard management.

How might they benefit from this research?
By establishing a strong researcher-stakeholder-community alliance to promote research co-design and co-development with users, the project will inherently ensure effective dissemination of the project outcomes and deliver impact. Communities and stakeholders will be engaged in all stages of the project to effectively enhance awareness of NDBF risk, create a sense of ownership and encourage uptake of the research outcomes. The web-based hazard assessment and forecasting tool will be housed and operated by local project partners (ICIMOD) and accessed by public users and stakeholders to better prepare indigenous people to face the increasing natural hazard risk, thus improving resilience and sustaining local socio-economic development. The developed models and tools will be readily available and used by local partners to support capacity building. Project workshops will help disseminate research outcomes to other stakeholders (e.g. NGOs, emergency planners, government agencies, etc.) and ICIMOD will transfer and apply the approaches to other South Asia regions, e.g. Bhutan. The project will train researchers and the innovative nature of the work will lead to the publication of high-quality research outputs, benefiting interdisciplinary researchers in NDBF and other natural hazards research and creating academic impact.