What’s on at EGU 2015

by Maria-Helena Ramos and Florian Pappenberger

The 2015 European Geosciences Union General Assembly is close (Vienna, 12 – 17 April 2015), and the program of the Hydrological Forecasting Sub-division of the Division on Hydrological Sciences has been released (see here).

To facilitate your navigation, and avoid you getting lost or ending up meeting anybody or learning anything interesting about new developments and applications in hydrological forecasting, here is a plan and a selection of links, which hopefully will invite you to look at the many interesting oral and poster works related to HEPEX (ical file to import in your calendar):

This is when it all starts. You will first be ‘flash flooded’ in USA, Italy, Spain and the whole Mediterranean region, before different types of droughts and uncertainty quantification methods come to draw your attention.

Here is the plan to follow:

• 08:30–12:00: Flash floods, hydro-geomorphic response, forecasting and risk management

And after lunch, no siesta is allowed:

• 13:30–15:00: Drought and water scarcity: hydrological monitoring, modelling and forecasting to improve water management

• You may have a coffee-talk break and then follow the ‘2-Minutes-Madness’ (PICO session), so is said, from 15:30 to 17:00: Hydrological forecasting: Untangling and reducing predictive uncertainty through improved model process description, data assimilation and post-processing

Before going home, you should go talk to the poster presenters, who will be in attendance at the Red Posters Area from 17:30 to 19:00. Check the authors who will be there and their works: Flash floods: here, Drought and water scarcity: here

You all will need to wake up early to communicate with the ensemble community and follow the oral presentations that are scheduled for Wednesday morning. For instance, don’t forget to come for the traditional forecast game (How much are you prepared to PAY for a forecast?), this year proposed by Louise Arnal, or for the presentation of Prof. Ezio Todini (On the proper use of Ensembles for Predictive Uncertainty assessment).

These are two among many other interesting works that you can find here:

• 08:30–12:00: Ensemble hydro-meteorological forecasting
• On the same day, from 17:30 to 19:00, the ‘ensemble’ posters will be shown. They focus on operational systems, data assimilation, post-processing, decision-making, etc. Check them all here.

• And, if you are also interested on climate and impacts on natural hazards, here is a session you may want to check too: 10:30–12:00: Linkages between climate and impact models: methodological challenges to serve contextual demands
• Also, in the afternoon, from 13:30 to 17:15, you may want to have a look at the presentations in the session: Integrated Environmental Prediction: Seamless coupled modelling of the dynamics and chemistry of the atmosphere, ocean and land. The session is looking at developments towards more closely coupled environmental prediction tools, with a number of presentations discussing hydrological model integration. This is the first year for the session at EGU, which discusses also an interesting aspect to HEPEX. Their poster session can be seen here.

IMPORTANT: Rendez-vous Wed 15, Apr @ 18:30

The HEPEX community, and any other curious person, is invited to meet in front of the poster ‘The Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment’ (number 14639) at 18:30 for a social meeting!

The show must go on! Here another session that will make its première at EGU.

Visit the presentations to know more about the operational side of hydrological forecasting and warning systems. There are about 50 works that will be presented in another ‘2-Minutes-Madness’ PICO session:

08:30–12:00: Operational forecasting and warning systems for natural hazards: challenges and innovation

And there is much more to see at EGU and to do in Vienna during the week 12-17 April. We are looking forward to seeing you there!