Europeanizing Flood Forecasting and the Geographies of Risk & Science in the EU

Lead Research Organisation: King's College London
Department Name: Geography

Abstract

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Description Focusing on the European Flood Alert System (EFAS) in particular, the aim of this project is to understand the institutional politics shaping (i) the adoption and use of novel ensemble flood forecasting technologies; (ii) the increasing involvement of the European Commission in the governance and operational management of flood events. One example of how this wider process of 'Europeanization' is taking place is EFAS, whose technical development has been led by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. Since 2003, EFAS has been using EPS to provide medium term (3-10 day) flood alerts to cooperating hydrological agencies in member- and candidate-states of the EU as well as to those within the Commission charged with coordinating civil protection across Europe. EFAS is thus a pioneer in the operational communication and use of ensemble flood forecasts, even if the sensitivities surrounding the expansion of EU competency into what had traditionally been a national or regional responsibility mean that EFAS is formally designated as still being in the 'pre-operational testing' phase of development.
To date we have completed some 65 interviews with various forecasters, civil protection authorities (CPAs), and policy makers in 17 countries from across Europe. Our interview sample has focused largely on the Rhine and the Danube as well those working at the EU-level, though we have also conducted some opportunistic interviews with forecasters and civil protection officials in France, Sweden and the UK.
Among the key findings from our research are the following:
• There is widespread unfamiliarity with EPS products, even among professional forecasters. Particularly among forecasters there is scepticism about the forecasting skill of current EPS products and their applicability to operational decision-making for civil protection. However flood forecasters did appreciate the capacity of EFAS alerts to give them an early warning of the increased risk of flooding over the next 3-10 days.
• Opinions vary about the informational value of the ensemble. Although EPS is not designed for this purpose, many flood forecasters sought to use ensemble forecasts from ECMWF, EFAS or other providers to confirm their own deterministic forecasts. Some forecast recipients believed the statistical mean of the ensemble represents the most likely and thus most useful forecast, beliefs firmly rejected by many others.
• The relationship between the number and statistical dispersion of ensemble members as a measure of total forecast uncertainty is contested. Some forecasters and civil protection officials were quick to use the ensemble spread, heuristically, as an operationally useful summary of total uncertainty, whereas other flood forecasters rejected this equation and worried the civil protection officials would not appreciate the unknowable risk of flooding exceeding the forecasted range.
• The thresholds for and operational significance of EFAS alert levels was unclear. Forecast recipients did not understand how EFAS thresholds were calculated and consequently struggled to interpret the significance of 'x number of ensemble members exceed the serious level' for their own operational decision making. There were concerns both about false alarms, if thresholds were set too low, and about blame after the fact that if some signal that was discounted as noise in the EPS led to flooding.
• The shift from deterministic to probabilistic forecasting also shifts responsibility for dealing with uncertainty onto forecast recipients. That change was not universally welcomed. Particularly in countries with strongly legalistic traditions of expert management, there were concerns about the erosion of professional responsibility to provide the 'right' answer, while in others (notably the UK), probabilistic forecasts were seen as a way to protect institutional reputations against blown forecasts.
• Despite generally welcoming EPS products to inform their own decision making, flood forecasters were often very sceptical about the ability of civil protection officials to understand or use probabilistic information for what forecasters often understood to be essentially binary decisions about whether or not to issue a flood or evacuate a town centre. There was little support for disseminating ensemble flood forecasts direct to the public.
• Civil protection officers had little experience with ensemble forecasts, but a general openness to probabilistic information, albeit in the form of simplified visualizations rather than the full 'spaghetti' plot time series of all 51 ensemble members. Civil protection officials had an increased appetite for probabilistic information where they could identify clear hedging strategies for optimising cost-loss trade-offs in flood incident management.
• Effective training and a close working relationship between forecast providers and users improved the understanding and use of EPS by forecast recipients. In turn 'upstream engagement' by end users in the design of EPS visualisations helped improve the communication of ensemble forecast products
Exploitation Route The most important future impacts of the project are likely to be on further developments of ensemble forecasting technologies, where the research has helped to highlight important communicative and institutional obstacles to making better use of probabilistic information for managing floods and other extreme weather events.
Sectors Environment,Government, Democracy and Justice
 
Description There is growing international interest in ensemble forecasting methods, which have the potential to extend forecast lead times and to quantify the uncertainties associated with them and thereby enable earlier and more proportionate responses to flooding and other forms of extreme weather. However, such forecasts are useless unless their recipients understand and act on them appropriately. Our project helped to improve the understanding, communication and use of ensemble forecasts in operational flood management. We worked closely with the EFAS team and their collaborators at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to provide them with specific advice to improve the design and dissemination of EFAS alerts. Our project also provided more general intelligence about the communicative and institutional obstacles to the effective operational use of ensemble forecasts. With forecasters across Europe and North American now moving to adopt ensemble forecasting methods, our research findings are both timely and of broad relevance to international efforts to anticipate and manage the risks from flooding and other extreme weather through innovative ensemble forecasting methods.
First Year Of Impact 2009
Sector Environment,Government, Democracy and Justice,Security and Diplomacy
Impact Types Societal,Policy & public services
 
Description Challenges in communicating and using ensemble forecasts in operational flood risk management 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited presentation given to the Met Office.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/geography/people/researchstaff/NobertMetOffice.pdf
 
Description Communicating ensemble forecasts : reflections on the European experience 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited seminar presentation to the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2012
URL http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/05/22/39/ECMWFseminar.pdf
 
Description End user understandings of uncertainty, ensemble forecasts, and EFAS 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited presentation given to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://isferea.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Workshops/2009-11-VALgEO/Documents/conference-proceedingsVALGEO_12.p...
 
Description Ensembling EFAS : policy windows, boundary objects, and institutional alignment in the making of the European Flood Alert System 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Paper for a European Research Council workshop on 'Transnational risks: (how) is preventative policy possible'.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
 
Description Ensembling EFAS : the institutional politics of 'good' flood forecasting in the European Union 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited paper for the 'Challenging models in the face of uncertainty' seminar, at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2012