Actif Best Practice Paper – Understanding and Reducing Uncertainty in Flood Forecasting

The overall the aim of the ACTIF project is to produce guidance from a cluster of European Commission (EC) funded research projects commissioned under the Fifth Framework Programme. The guidance will reflect state-of-the-art information to improve the diversity of practices, institutional arrangements and management targets currently present in Europe. It should be noted that United Nations and Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) Guidelines on Sustainable flood prevention (2000 updated 2003) state that “Everyone who may suffer from the consequences of flood events should also take – if possible – his / her own precautions. To this end, appropriate information and forecasting systems should be established by the competent authority”. Furthermore it was noted that “correct flood warnings and forecasts are important elements for adequate behaviour of the public during flood events”. The present report aims at providing best practice guidelines to operational flood forecasting staff, relating to the assessment and use of measures to assess uncertainty in flood forecasting. A survey of current best practices on the assessment and use of flood forecasting uncertainty is given in this report. This showed a general lack of real understanding of the potential benefits that may be derived from the operational use of the forecasting uncertainty in terms of an improvement in the reliability of decisions.