The Uncertainty in the Prediction of Flash Floods in the Northern Mediterranean Environment

Abstract

Development of an operational flood forecasting system and assessment of forecast uncertainty are the principal topics of this paper. Flood forecasting procedures are developed for a Mediterranean environment. A procedure that uses the Ensemble Prediction System as input for a semidistributed hydrologic model is presented. A rainfall downscaling model is used to bridge the scale gap between numerical weather prediction model output and hydrologic modeling input. The results are illustrated for the November 1994 Piedmont flood.