IMPRINTS

The objective of IMPRINTS is to contribute to the reduction of loss of life and economic damage through the improvement of the preparedness and the operational risk management of flash flood and debris flow (from now on FF & DF) generating events, as well as contributing to sustainable development through reducing damages to the environment. Specifically, the consortium will develop three methodologies of different complexities to provide FF & DF forecasting and warnings:

(i) An early warning FF & DF system based on simplified calculations.

(ii) An integrated probabilistic forecasting FF & DF system.

(iii) A probabilistic rule-based forecasting system adapted to the operational use by practitioners. These systems will be tested on five selected flash flood prone areas, two located in mountainous catchments in the Alps, and three in Mediterranean catchments. The practitioner partners of IMPRINTS, namely the risk management authorities and the utility company managers in charge of emergency management in these areas, will supervise these tests. The development of such systems will be carried out using, and capitalising on, the results of the previous and ongoing research on forecasting and warning systems for FF & DF, in which several of the partners have already played a prominent role

EU researchers have developed a novel early warning system for European areas at risk of flash floods (FFs). Although plans for managing flood risk must address all aspects, researchers focused on the 3 Ps: prevention, protection and preparedness. The project’s goal was to work towards establishing a coherent common methodology in Europe in order to reduce the loss of life and financial damage caused by FF/DF events. To achieve its objective, the IMPRINTS project set out to produce methods and tools for the emergency services and utility companies responsible for the management of FF/DF risks. The impact of future changes, such as climate change, were also analysed so as to draw up guidelines for mitigation and adaptation measures. IMPRINTS partners developed an early warning operational platform based on rainfall predictions using meteorological models and from weather radar networks. The platform is able to transform these rainfall forecasts into hydrological ones, and combine them with other data to provide a full early warning system for FF and DF risk management.