Sistema Avançat d’Avisos per Inundacions

Storms and heavy rain can trigger multiple hazards, including flooding and flash flooding, which lead to major impacts on population and critical infrastructure across Europe. Early warning systems to forecast these hazards are available to Civil Protection Agencies (CPAs) across Europe, and the use of advanced tools to anticipate the expected impacts are crucial to support efficient decision-making for emergency management.

INLINE inherits the results obtained in the UCPM project EDERA and will make a step further in storm and flood impact forecasting over Europe by (i) improving the initialisation of discharge forecasts, (ii) applying Artificial Intelligence to produce better impact forecasts of convective storms (extending their lead times and adding uncertainty assessment) and compound floods, and (iii) developing a user-configurable service to issue locally-relevant notifications to CPAs.

The INLINE developments will be demonstrated in real time during a 15-month period with the participation of end-users over Europe and in a cross-border pilot site (Portugal and Spain). The demonstration will evaluate the added value of the INLINE developments for decision making by end users, considering multiple criteria including their usefulness for the coordination among CPAs at various levels or to support cooperation during cross-border events.

INLINE will promote the uptake of the project developments by establishing a Community of Interest amongst a wide range of users, including CPAs, national hydro-meteorological institutes, that will be encouraged to participate in the real-time demonstration and provide continuous feedback.

The sustainability of the outcomes of the project will be achieved by integrating the INLINE impact forecasting developments into a pre-operational version of the CEMS-Floods European Flood Awareness System, which provides direct support to the DG-ECHO ERCC.