Flash Flood Early Warning System: Study of Effectiveness and Efficiency of Flash Flood Early Warning and Dissemination in (original) (raw)

Early Warning Dissemination System for Flood: Bangladesh Perspectives

Journal of Dhaka International University , 2019

The study has been conducted with the objective to assess the existing flood early warning dissemination system (FEWDS) in Bangladesh and to recommend some suitable improvements in the existing system based on review of literature, interaction with stakeholders of various organizations involved in flood forecasting & dissemination and also analysis of feedback from the flood affected people of the study area in Bangladesh. The existing flood forecasting & dissemination system has been studied to assess the present activities and future expectations. The recommendations for active participation by all related organizations have been made in this study. Study has been conducted by surveying the opinion of flood vulnerable communities of the selected area so that all elements of the FEWDS would provide as a useful flood warnings tools to all potential users. At the grass-root level of Bangladesh, no effective flood early warning dissemination system has been developed. The Flood Forecasting and Warning Center (FFWC) of Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) have been disseminating the flood early warning messages nationally since 1972. But, due to various reasons, people of the flood prone areas don’t get these warning messages properly. Hence improving flood early warning dissemination system is very important to reduce flood risk & damages at the community level. With a view to improving the existing flood early warning dissemination at the community level, a scoping study has been conducted in the flood prone area within the Meghan river basin in Bangladesh. The study carried out the gaps of existing flood early warning dissemination and also recommended measures for the improvement of existing early warning dissemination system at the community level. This study was involving literature review, cross-sectional study, discussion with involved stakeholders, content analysis. The approach of the study was participatory. At the institutional and community level, the tools of qualitative methodology, such as Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Key Informants Interview (KII) etc. were adopted to conduct the study. The findings of the study have also been categorized into ‘community findings’ and ‘institutional findings’. In community findings the community people were expressive to the need of timely early warning and risk information specific to their respective areas. In the institutional level, it has been realized that most of the members of the Upazila and Union Disaster management committees are not aware regarding the national source agency responsible to disseminate flood early warning message to the local disaster management committees.

Performance of early warning systems in mitigating flood effects. A review

Journal of African Earth Sciences, 2024

Floods have major effects on the livelihoods of rural and urban communities in Africa. In order to lessen its effects, means for mitigating them have been developed, including the use of flood Early Warning Systems (EWS) as a preparedness measure against flood effects. However, there is little comprehensive documentation of the performance of flood EWS in areas where floods occur frequently in Africa. This paper reviews the extent to which flood EWS are contributing to the reduction of flood effects in Africa. This review is important because it gives the reasons why people are affected even when warnings are in place. The review was aided by a literature survey from Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct engines. Through this review, it has been observed that people use traditional and modern systems to communicate flood early warnings. The results indicate that upon receiving the early warnings from the aforementioned systems, people vacate the flood-prone areas for safer places, cleaning water drainage systems and buildings, conducting evacuation training, preparing shelter centers, and forming flood management committees. Furthermore, it was noted that those responses have been instrumental in enhancing food security, reducing human injuries and deaths, and reducing damage and/or losses to properties. It is concluded that if people are informed ahead of time of the flood, they can take more response measures to prepare themselves and reduce the flood's effects. Similarly, the ability of relevant national, local, and community institutions to understand, interpret, disseminate, and respond to flood warnings is critical to the effectiveness of flood early warning systems.

Effectiveness and Efficiency of Early Warning Systems for Flash-Floods (EWASE)

EWASE approaches flood damage protection as a cross sectional and interdisciplinary task comprising different fields of politics, economics, sociology, environment and technology. Among experts it is widely accepted that flood protection is not simply an engineering problem which can be solved by technical measures only. The motive for current European flood research activities is the ambition to achieve a more deliberate and transparent discussion and dealing with flooding risks. In this context, it has become generally accepted that floods are a recurring natural phenomenon and complete protection against flood damage (zero risk) is an illusion. Within this development, it has been frequently stated that only an adequate combination of technical and non technical measures is suitable to provide efficient strategies for successful flood risk management. Flood alerts provided by early warning systems (EWS) are an important element of comprehensive flood risk management strategies. T...

Flash Flood Utilization (FFU) For Indian Farmers

International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology IJRASET, 2020

Flash floods happens when dams break, when levees fail or when an ice jam releases a large amount of water by melting or as huge ice block slides and change of sudden climatic condition due to Global warming Flash flood is a destructive type of natural hazard incident. The main danger due to velocity and speed with which flash flood develops and resulting powerful water flows. The risks arise from related phenomena such as tangible assets & debris flow, ice jam melts, surface water flooding, etc. The most comprehensive way to provide warnings is to install gauges both at and upstream of areas at risk and to use the outputs from forecasting models to help to extend warning lead times. This article tries to focus on the causes of flash flood and specially the remedial part which is optimum utilization of flash flood for agricultural irrigation purpose.