European Floods Portal

The JRC’s research on floods of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) brings together information on river floods and flood risk in Europe, in order to assess the physical and socio-economic impacts of global warming on hydrological extremes and on water resources availability in Europe. This research focuses on improving preparedness and response during a flood crisis, mainly through early warning and monitoring systems, but also through the assessment of mitigation and prevention measures. It has developed several systems to predict and monitor floods at a European and global scale. Furthermore, the JRC’s flood research focuses how future climate may impact flood risk, using:

• high-resolution regional climate information
• pan-European hydro-morphological datasets
• hydrological modelling
• statistical analyses.

Information results from ongoing research within the “Floods” Action at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, as well as from public available information from EU countries and includes:

• European Flood Awareness System (EFAS): designed to produce overviews on ongoing and forecasted floods in Europe up to ten days in advance
• Global Flood Detection System (GFDS): provides up-to-date information on the impact and extent of floods occurring across borders using real-time satellite observations
• Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS): couples weather forecasts with a hydrological model in order to produce real-time global flood forecasts with a lead time of up to 30 days.
• LISFLOOD: is a geographic information system (GIS)-based hydrological rainfall-runoff-routing model that is capable of simulating the hydrological processes that occur in a catchment area. It can be used in large and transnational catchment areas for a variety of applications, including flood forecasting. It can also be used to assess the effects of river regulation measures, land-use change and climate change.

Morevoer, the JRC participated in the FLOODsite project (2005-2009) and IMPRINTS project (2009-2012) with dedicated studies on probabilistic early warning methodologies of flashfloods. This work has resulted in the development of a European flash flood early warning indicator, which is now also incorporated into the operational European Flood Awareness System (EFAS).