Global Flood Service and Toolbox (GFST)
A First Look at the GFST Survey:
The survey for the Global Flood Service and Toolbox (GFST), online since 5 May 2014, has provided an exciting collection of possible tools and services that can be integrated within the Global Flood Partnerships in the near future.
There are TEN service providers with a potential to run operationally for GFP. The services include global flood forecasting, detection, monitoring, flood extent and risk mapping.
FIVE tools have been proposed to become part of the GFST, three of which are also proposing to run an operational service (GFDS, GFMS and ISIS. see below).
The turnout for the data sets was comparatively low with only Four data set proposed so far -- but we expect that more will come as the services and tools develop further.
The next steps are now to define missing metadata and to define the data standards. The surveys (which are designed in three parts for each of the Services, Tool and Data) are STILL OPEN, for those who are yet to register their tools and/or services. Please go ahead and fill them out at
Survey on Flood Services,
Survey on Flood Tools and
Survey on Flood Data.
A concise overview is listed below:
1. Survey outcome for Global Flood Services
- A total of 10 services were reported. The names of organizations (6) and contact persons (with phone and email addresses) have been provided. The following are names of the services and providing organizations.
a. Global Flood News, KAJO s. r. o.
b. ISIS, CH2M HILL
c. Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS), JRC
d. Global Flood Detection System (GFDS), JRC
e. Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), JRC
f. Global Integrated Flood Map, JRC
g. id-Lab, Deltares. More information on iD-Lab is here.
h. Global Flood Monitoring System (GFMS), ESSIC University of Maryland
i. Experimental River Discharge Measurements, University of Colorado/Dartmouth Flood Observatory
j. Extreme Rainfall Detection System (ERDS), ITHACA
- List of services provided (and providers, see above for the letter codes):
- Continuous flood detection a, d, h
- Continuous real-time flood forecasting b, c, g, h
- Continuous real-time flood forecasting and extent mapping b, f, h
- Continuous risk mapping b
- List of ongoing floods with impact evaluation e
- Daily update of River Discharge status i
- Continuous flood hazard mapping servicej
- Data exchange standards for corresponding services listed above.
- a- Georss, GeoJSON
- b- GIS vectors
- c- waterML
- d- OGC WMS; KML, RSS, CSV; Geotiff
- e- OGC WMS; KML, GeoRSS
- f- OGC formats
- g- netCDF-CF Thredds/OpenDAP server, WMS, WCS
- h- GIS vector, Raster, binary files, can be other major formats
- i- Presently daba page (html) online; moving towards WaterML
- j- WMS, WFS
2. Survey outcome for Global Flood Tools
- A total of 5 tools were reported. Similarly, the names of organizations (5) and contact persons (with phone and email addresses) have been provided. The following are names of the tools and providing organization.
a. ISIS, CH2M HILL
b. Speed-efficient flood inundation downscaling algorithm, UCLA-JIFRESSE/University of Bristol
c. Global Flood Detection System Desktop Tool (GFDS), JRC
d. Delft-Dashboard, Deltares
e. Global Flood Monitoring System (GFMS), ESSIC University of Maryland
- List of tools provided (and providers, see above for the letter codes):
- Flood Forecasting tool a, e
- Flood mapping tool a, c, e
- Flood detection tool c
- Flood hazard mapping tool a, b, e
- Flood risk mapping tool a, e
- Delft3D rapid model setup tool d
- Data exchange standards for corresponding tools listed above.
- a- GIS vector
- b- GIS vector, Raster, KML
- c- GIS vector, Raster
- d- NetCDF-
- e- GIS vector, Raster, binary files, can be other major formats
3. Survey outcome for Global Flood Data
-
Global Flood Detection System (GFDS) Archive is a composite daily images of flood signal (% water coverage per pixel) and flood magnitude (anomaly). The time series available from 1998-now with spatial resolution 0.9dd / 10km. It can be used for low resolution flood mapping / discharge calibration. - Data exchange standard: Geotiff, WGS84
-
Dartmouth Flood observatory Archive is based on information derived from news, governmental, instrumental, and remote sensing sources. It includes the list of recent floods, and historical floods (starting from 1985). - Data exchange standard: .xml, .xls, GIS maps.
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Objectives of the GFST and definitions:
As one of the pillars of the Global Flood Partnership (GFP) , the objectives of the GFST are: i) to provide operational flood detection and risk assessment services to the Global Flood Observatory and disaster managers ; ii) to share tools and data relevant to flood forecasting, detection, risk and impact assessment within the partnership; and iii) to create a platform for historical analysis, model validation and model comparison studies. The GFST will foster joint development and collaborations with in the partnership.
Services
Services can be described as regular and reliable provision of
information related to floods on global scale that can be used for analysis by
the Flood Observatory and other end users of GFP. A service will provide up to
date information on upcoming and ongoing major floods. Examples range from
seasonal-short range flood forecasting, daily-hourly flood detection, as well
as instantaneous media reporting and crowd sourcing. Requirement to become a
service, is the commitment from the institutions to provide the service for the
duration of the pilot phase (3 years). In order to become a service also agreed
OGC standards and protocols for the exchange of data and visualization of
results must be followed and fact sheets about the service should be produced
and training material expected to be provided. The information of the services
can be visualized directly on the common GFP platform or (initially) linked to
the provider’s side.
Tools
Tools are modules, programmes, software or applications which can provide
information about floods such as forecasts, detection, monitoring, risk and
impact assessment and reporting. Examples for tools could be programmes for
delineating flood extent from satellite images or hydrological models that can
be set-up on global scale. Requirements for tools to be part of GFST is that
they are sufficiently documented, their usability has been demonstrated and for
the duration of the pilot phase a contact person exists for providing needed
support. Tools are stored by the provider with a link in the GFST inventory
page. Naturally, the tool box will grow with time and have strong links with
the Research and Development box of the GFP.
Data
It may be useful to share or document the underlying data for the services and tools. Data sets are expected
to comply the common standards for data and metadata sharing, and preferably be
shared freely within the flood partnership.