HEPEX 2017 Year in Review

The Hepex Portal published 28 posts in 2017. Here below the year in review, with its highlights.

First of all, two important events for Hepex coming soon:

• Just a few weeks more to submit your abstract(s) to EGU 2018 (deadline: 10 Jan 2018, 13:00 CET). You can check all sessions proposed under the Hydrological Forecasting sub-division in this Hepex post.
• The 2018 Hepex Workshop in Melbourne (“Breaking the Barriers”) is coming soon, on 6-8 February 2018. An exciting and intense programme, with 44 oral presentations and 40 posters, is waiting for us. Online registration (no fees) is open until 20 Jan 2018 (check here).

And also blog posts on past events:

• a post on the event “Ensemble Prediction: past, present and future”, which took place during the ECMWF’s Annual Seminar, from 11-14 September 2017, in Reading (UK), to celebrate 25 years of ensemble weather forecasts. Several interesting presentations made available here.
• a post on the session “(Ir‑)relevant scales in hydrology: Which scales matter for water resources management?”, convened at this year’s EGU General Assembly 2017.
• a post on the 15th session of the WMO’s Commission for Hydrology (CHy-15), held in Rome, 7-13 December 2016.
• a post on the Fourth Pacific Meteorological Council (PMC) and Second Pacific Meteorological Ministers Meeting (PMMM), which was held in Honiara, Solomon Islands, from 14 to 17 August 2017.

Two quizzes and one competition for the readers in 2017:

• Quiz on guessing the rivers from the space
• Quiz on guessing the city by looking at its river from space
• Competition on How would you explain your work if you knew only 200 simple words?

Publications and more on science and operations:

The HESS special issue on “Sub-seasonal to seasonal hydrological forecasting“, organized after the Hepex workshop in Norrköping, Sweden, in 2015, has gathered 40 papers of excellent quality.

Seasonal forecasts were also the topic of two blog posts, with bias correction (How suitable is quantile mapping for post-processing GCM precipitation forecasts?) and operational systems (Meeting user needs for sub-seasonal streamflow forecasts in Australia) highlighted.

Users were central for two posts on flood forecasting and warning: Community of Users on Secure, Safe and Resilient Societies and Understanding public responses to flood warnings, for instance.

And something to think about concerning the future of ensemble prediction: bridging the gap between hyper-resolution and hydrologic ensemble prediction.

We also published opinions on meteorological prediction and keeping flood memories and historical marks of high waters.

Four new interviews were published in 2017:

• History of Hydrology Wiki: Interview with Keith Beven
• Hydropower management in Brazil and water forecasts: Interview with Alberto Assis dos Reis
• A short course on Hydrological Forecasting: Interview with Marie-Amélie Boucher and Jan Verkade
• Developing and running an ensemble prediction system:  Interview with Jutta Thielen-del Pozo

All Hepex interviews (15 in total) can be found here.

And, of course, games and decision-making:

A decision making “serious-game”, the Shopkeepers Dilemma Game, and the optimal decision rule were explained by Micha Werner, and an interesting discussion on Risk aversion and decision making using ensemble forecasts was proposed by Marie-Amélie Boucher and Vincent Boucher.

You can also help Hepex to produce more games and teaching material: check here.

Hepex blog portal is running since April 2013: almost five years of a very original and rich content on hydrological forecasting

• Many more posts and news can be found in our archives and throughout the Portal.
• For 2018, we invite you all to contribute with your own blog posts (tips can be found here) and to support the organization of Hepex activities and workshops.

Happy holidays! The Portal will be back in 2018!