Flash-flood alert systems

Improve community resilience to flash floods.

Send actionable flood warnings specifying flood depth and time of occurrence to save lives and greatly reduce property damages losses

Floods are the most common type of natural disasters. Flash floods mainly occur as a result of heavy rains, sometimes combined with snowmelt, that quickly fill low areas because the ground cannot absorb it. As a result, smaller channels such as streams and creeks, quickly rise in very short times making it difficult to send warnings ahead of time. As only main rivers are gauged, warning alerts based on river gauge trends and weather forecasts underestimate the risk of flooding because they don’t take into account smaller channels and surface water.

Urban areas are very vulnerable to flash floods because runoff through the impervious surfaces quickly exceed the capacity of the collection system. Consequently, low spots such as underpasses, underground parking garages, basements are flooded potentially causing deaths and large property damages losses.

ADASA provides flash flood alert systems backed by a hydrodynamic model considering terrain topography and land cover coupled with high-resolution weather forecasts. Our experience with flood forecasting enables our systems to send ahead of time warnings that allow taking resilience measures that may save lives and reduce property damage losses. Model continuous runs will update results and warning insights (depth and time of occurrence) as soon as new weather forecasts are available, usually four times a day.

Benefits

Improve community resilience by receiving flood warnings.
Warnings include flash floods due to smaller ungauged stream sudden rises and surface runoff.
Results are continuously updated making the warnings insights more accurate as the time to flood approaches.