Schematic and Components of Flood Forecasting System for a Complex River System: Damodar River Basin

Authorship: Kunal Konar, Consultant (Business Development & Analytic Hydrology)

Note: This article was first published as a LinkedIn Article in 03Sep2024.

Main four components for the unified Flood Forecasting System (FFS) for a Multi-River system, in this case, Damodar Basin are shown below. The Decision Support System (DSS) is one of the four components of the FFS.

Figure 1: Components of Unified Flood Forecasting System for the whole River System

Synthesizing several requirements for FFS-DVC as specified in the Terms of Reference (see National Hydrology Project’s Website or Damodar Valley Corporation’s website), FFS-DVC needs to be developed to satisfy following objectives:

• FFS should be developed as customized stand-alone modelling system with front-end tools,

  • to extract and input/interface user-selectable model inputs such as rainfall measurements, estimates and forecasts from global and national sources, and topographic, hydraulic and thematic data, and other data,

  • to recalibrate when improved data becomes available in future, and

  • to disseminate model outputs to public users, institutions and communities.

• The front-end tool of FFS should ideally be a stand-alone user-friendly Windows application that does not require in-depth knowledge of complicated models and GIS applications, and has the capability to integrate flood forecast model results and knowledge base of topographic and thematic GIS data.

• The front-end tool should have decision support component which will be based on the inundation model developed under FFS-DS to obtain optimised rate, quantity and timings of release from the upstream reservoirs, to minimise the flood losses downstream.

• FFS should be able to dynamically link the suite of models from FFS-US and FFS-DS system.

• FFS should have the capability to manage myriads of information and data like satellite-based rainfall estimates, QPFs, water level and discharge forecasts, GIS layers of flood inundations and so on.

• FFS should be able to automate simulation run, report generation and dissemination i.e. typical workflow of real-time flood forecasting to be made once in a day or at every 6 hours during ensuing flood.

  • Should be able to incorporate pre-defined formats and protocols for dissemination into it.

• FFS should be able to provide information to and receive information from the Web-based Application for Dissemination and Crowd Sourcing, WADCS.

In summary, FFS will integrate suite of models from FFS-US and FFS-DS, will provide input for and receive information from the WADCS, will have a customized front-end tool as a Windows-based application with provision of a reservoir module to obtain optimized rate, quantity and timings of release from the upstream reservoirs, to minimize the flood losses downstream.