Flood Risk Management: Research and Practice Samuels et al.

(eds)
2009 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-48507-4

Advances in radar-based flood warning systems. The EHIMI system

and the experience in the Bess flash-flood pilot basin
C. Corral, D. Velasco, D. Forcadell & D. Sempere-Torres
Grup de Recerca Aplicada en Hidrometeorologia (GRAHI), Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya,
Barcelona, Spain

E. Velasco
Agncia Catalana de lAigua (ACA), Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT: The region of Catalunya (North-East Spain) is one of the most affected by floods in the Mediterranean area. Inside this region, the Bess catchment (1020 km2) is one of the selected basins for the study
of flash-floods inside FLOODsite. The regional government has promoted the EHIMI project for the development of an operational flood warning system based on weather radar. The paper introduces this system and the
experience in the Bess pilot catchment.
1

INTRODUCTION

The region of Catalunya (North-East Spain) is one of

the most affected by floods in the Mediterranean area
(generally flash-floods). Owning a dense weather
radar network, Catalunya is one of the Hydrometeorological Observatories for the study of flash-floods,
and it is involved in several projects related to flood
hazard. Inside this region, the Bess catchment
(1020 km2) is one of the selected FLOODsite flashfloods pilot basins.
A big effort is being made by the regional government in order to implement an operational flood warning system, a tool focused on warning decision making
for minimising risk to people, economic activity and
properties, and guiding water resources management.
This has been crystallized in the EHIMI project (Integrated Tool for Hydrometeorological Forecasting), in
collaboration with the Catalan Water Agency (ACA,
www.gencat.cat/aca) and the Meteorological Service
of Catalunya (SMC, www.meteo.cat).
One of the features of this system is its careful
radar data processing scheme, which holds several
automatic procedures for the tracking between consecutive radar pictures and the correction of signal
stability, radar beam occlusion, ground clutter and
vertical profile reflectivity. Some of these procedures are zone based, using an identification of areas
having different rainfall structures, mainly between
stratiform and convective rainfall. The last step of
the radar processing is a merging procedure with
punctual raingauge measurements from different networks, providing an improved surface rainfall field

and several rainfall accumulations related to different

periods.
The EHIMI system includes the DiCHiTop distributed rainfall runoff model. It is a grid model based
on a loss function at cell scale, provided by a coupled
storage model between the SCS model (urban area)
and Topmodel (rural and forested). The routing
method is based on the linear diffusive wave unit
hydrograph, separating the hillslope and the riverchannelled process. Currently, a non-linear routing
approach derived from the diffusive wave method is
being tested in the main rivers.
EHIMI is implemented in the ACAs control centre with successful results. A radar based rainfall
nowcasting algorithm has been tested and implemented, with the aim to extend the forecasting lead
time with other information (weather forecast models). Inside the FLOODsite framework, the system
is oriented to provide distributed warnings based on
surface rainfall accumulations and runoff forecasts
(at the resolution of 1 1 km2), having different
hydrological sense, and summarising the important
places where a risk degree is expected. Currently,
these risk warnings are related to hazard probability (synthesised in the return period), but later they
will include the concept of vulnerability. Rainfallbased warnings are provided in the whole area of
Catalunya, while runoff based warnings are only
provided where the hydrological model is rightly
operational (now in the pilot Bess basin and part of
the Llobregat basin), and a methodology to gradually extend the hydrological model to the rest of the
region is designed.

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are a common fact. These problems are enhanced

by the human activity and the urbanisation of flood
planes. Moreover, several ephemeral streams have
become streets in many towns (very common near the
coast), which are affected by minor but risky floods
very often.
After the floods that affected Catalunya in 1982
and the Basque Country in 1983, the Spanish government decided to invest in a real-time network of
raingauges and stage sensors that would be managed
by different water basin authorities (the SAIH system). Some years later, a weather radar network was
installed, managed by the Spanish Meteorological
Agency (INM, now AEMET). And with the reappearance of the Catalan Meteorological Service (SMC)
after 60 years, an impulse was made to suitably manage different local raingauge networks and to create a
dense weather radar network (up to 4 C-band radars).
Figure 1. The hydrological observatory of Catalunya, with
the radar network and the river stage sensor deployment (for
the shake of clarity the raingauge network is not shown).

2 THE HYDROLOGICAL CONTEXT

2.1

The hydrologycal observatory of Catalunya

The region of Catalunya, located at the North-Est of

the Iberian Peninsula, occupies around 32000 km2,
and it is structured by three mountainous ranges: the
Pyrenees, with summits above 3000 m,a,s,l, and the
Prelitoral (around 1000 m high) and the Litoral ranges
(around 500 m high), both roughly parallel to the
coast. At different scale, each of these mountainous
ranges acts as natural barriers to the air coming from
the sea (warm and wet), thus favouring the geneses
of convective processes and intense rainfalls. Climatologically heterogeneous, this region shows yearly
average rainfalls typically ranging between 400 and
1200 mm/year, but the maximal precipitation can be
more than 1200 mm in one day. With this parameters
in mind, the 10-year return period daily precipitation commonly exceeds 100 mm, and in an attempt
to illustrate this phenomena, accumulated rainfall
over 200 mm in one day is seen at least once per year
somewhere in the Spanish Mediterranean coast.
Between these mountainous ranges, the land surface is consequence of sedimentary basins subjected
to fractures and other tectonic pressures, shaping also
a hilly terrain. Hydrology has modelled this heterogeneous land, shaping developed drainage networks, but
only in few cases they have got a mature state. Thus,
while river slopes are really important in the mountainous areas, they remain high in most of the river
profiles (more than 1% are not strange). These factors
imply short catchment response times, and as heavy
rainfall over short periods are frequent, flash floods

2.2

The Bess catchment

Within this picture, the Bess catchment (1020 km2)

is located between the Prelitoral and the Litoral
mountain ranges, crossing this last one by the strait
of Montcada. Downstream, a delta was formed to the
Mediterranean Sea, shaping part of Barcelonas plane.
As can be seen in Figure 2, the drainage network has a
basic structure of different rivers coming from North
to South, draining to the main river (the Bess itself)
in the down part of the catchment. The mean areal
precipitation is estimated in 660 mm per year, and as
a typical feature of these Mediterranean catchments,
the potential evapotranspiration is higher (around

Figure 2. The Bess catchment with the main hydrological

instrumentation (river stage sensors and raingauges).

1296

775 mm), although the effective evapotranspiration

is around 535 mm. These rivers show a torrential
behaviour, since they are almost dry most of the year,
but they can experience suddenly important floods,
with importance of sediment motion due to the high
slopes of the river beds (around 5 per 1000 in the
lower part, around 10 per 1000 upstream).
The land use is changing quite rapidly, and while in
the mountainous zones the forest is increasing (with
preponderance of pines and evergreen oaks), in the
plane zones the agricultural uses are integrated by
the urban expansion of towns. In fact, most of these
towns are now integrated into the metropolitan area
of Barcelona (one of the socio-economic important
centres in Europe), and more than one million people
live inside the catchment.
In 50 years, this area has experienced a fast and
many times chaotic industrial and urban growth that
can be considered harmful from the point of view of
hydrological risk. Sometimes looking for the cheapest
terrain, sometimes searching for a place with facilities
to remove wastewater, in general having a good link
with road transportation lines, many of the industries
are located up to the river limits. Moreover, during
this period the land planning tendencies have consolidated a spread urban area, with a lot of buildings and
houses close to a variety of minor rivers (torrents and
rieras) that are also prone to torrential flash floods.
The catchment is quite well instrumented, with
several river stage sensors gauging the main rivers
(managed by the ACA), and there are also other stage
sensors along the Bess Fluvial Park in the last stretch
of the river (managed by CLABSA).
3 THE EHIMI SYSTEM
3.1

The project

From 2002, a big effort is being made by the regional

government in order to implement an operational
flood warning system, a tool focused on warning
decision making for minimising risk to people, economic activity and properties, and guiding water
resources management. This has been crystallized
in the EHIMI project (acronym of the Catalan words
meaning Integrated Tool for Hydrometeorological
Forecasting), developed by the GRAHI-UPC in collaboration with the Catalan Water Agency (ACA)
and the Meteorological Service of Catalunya (SMC).
From the beginning, this project was born with the
aim to take profit of radar information from the dense
Catalan network.
The main features of the project are:
1. Development of a radar data quality control and
correction processing to generate an improved
quantitative radar rainfall field.

2. Implementation of a distributed hydrological

model over the entire region.
3. Development of a rainfall forecasting technique
able to assimilate available information, from
radar for short lead times, to numerical weather
prediction models for longer lead times.
4. Computation of several warnings, based on both
forecasted rainfall, runoff or derived variables
(e.g. accumulated volumes entering a reservoir),
from the definition of different thresholds (risk,
probability of occurrence, etc).
5. Development of visualization tools to analyse different hydrological products and visualize warnings at different scales.
3.2

The radar processing scheme

In order to correct different kind of errors that affect

radar measurements and to provide improved surface
rainfall fields and rainfall forecasts (accumulated rainfall related to several time-steps), different algorithms
are implemented in a radar processing chain, most of
them requiring 3-D (volumetric) radar data.
The processing chain consists of these steps:
1. Identifying and correcting the under-detected precipitation zones caused by beam blocking. From
the application of a technique of ground clutter simulation using topographic information
(Delrieu & Creutin, 1995; Snchez-Diezma, 2001),
beam-blocking (as the energy lost due to radar
interception with ground) is estimated and corrected in the shadow affected zones (behind zones
affected by ground clutter).
2. Identifying and correcting echoes caused by nonmeteorological targets (mainly ground clutter)
under both mean and anomalous propagation conditions. Considering some statistics (namely shallow vertical extent, high spatial variability and

Figure 3. Scheme of the radar processing chain.

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

low radial velocities), and applying a fuzzy-logic

technique (Berenguer, 2006a), a value that quantifies in each radar bin the probability of being
affected by clutter is obtained. Those bins in which
the probability value exceeds a certain threshold
are flagged as ground clutter. Reflectivity values
in these affected bins are recovered by interpolation using reflectivity values of the non-affected
neighbor bins. The substitution is made differently
in convectives zones (vertical substitution) than in
the rest (horizontal substitution) using a first classification of the rainfall type.
Applying a global correction factor to compensate for errors affecting the power calibration of
the radar. This factor is obtained previously using
recent radar and raingauge data, comparing event
accumulated rainfall in zones not affected by
other problems (as bright band or radar attenuation) which are not corrected yet in the processing
chain (Franco, 2008).
Partitioning reflectivity echoes from the precipitation type (stratiform or convective), according to
Franco (2006). This classification algorithm combines criteria related to the horizontal gradient
of reflectivity and criteria related to the vertical
development of the precipitation.
Extrapolating the radar measurements of reflectivity to the ground level (methodology proposed
by Franco, 2008). This method applies a different
extrapolating scheme depending on the precipitation type: a) in stratiform zones an average of the
vertical profiles of reflectivity (VPRs) observed
near the radar is used as representative of each
local VPR to extrapolate the reflectivity to the
ground level; b) in convective zones the reflectivity at ground is directly estimated from the lowest
radar elevation (PPI).
Transforming the estimated reflectivity at ground
into rain intensity (mm/h) applying a different Z-R
relationship, again depending on the precipitation
type (stratiform and convective).
Obtaining accumulated rainfall fields from the
instantaneous radar fields. The used procedure
(Bellon & Zawadzki, 1994) applies a tracking
algorithm, assuming that the precipitation field
moves at constant velocity between consecutive
radar scans. A motion field is obtained by correlation and it is used to advect radar rainfall fields
from one scan to the next (time interval of one
minute), interpolating rainfall values linearly.
From this information, several radar rainfall accumulations are obtained related to different time
periods (from 10-min to 1 day).
Merging the accumulated rainfall fields estimated from radar data with the raingauge information, for different accumulation periods. The
geostatistical procedure (Velasco-Forero et al.,

2004; Velasco-Forero et al., 2005) applies kriging

with external drift and uses an improved technique to estimate the 2-D spatial correlation maps
of rainfall (from the current radar spatial structure). It uses raingauge information as the primary variable (to be interpolated) and the radar
rainfall field as the secondary variable (to obtain
the external drift).
9. Obtaining a rainfall forecasting. Currently the
forecasting consists in a radar-based nowcasting
technique during 2 hours (explained in more detail
in 4.1).
3.3

Hydrological modelling

The DiCHiTop hydrological model (Corral, 2004)

was developed to fit the EHIMI requirements: distributed, robust and easy to implement. It is a gridbased model that works at a given resolution (here at
1 1 km2, the hydrological cell), defining a simplified drainage system at this scale (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Concept and application of the grid-based hydrological model.

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A loss function is applied at the hydrological cell

resolution, provided by a coupled storage model
between the SCS model (Mockus, 1957) in urban
areas and Topmodel (Beven & Kirkby, 1979) in rural
and forested areas (Figure 5).
The routing method is based on the linear diffusive
wave unit hydrograph (Szymkiewicz, 2002), separating the hillslope and the river-channelled processes.
Parameters of these unit hydrographs are related to
the drainage network (Figure 6) and local slopes.
3.4

Distributed warnings

The system is oriented to provide distributed warnings at the working resolution (1 1 km2). As a first
step, a rainfall warning was computed over the counties of the region, based on some simple thresholds
as mean or maximum rainfall accumulations over
certain periods.
Later, a more sophisticated criteria has been developed, related to hazard probability (synthesised in
the return period), which is summarised by the IDF
curve (Intensity-Duration-Frequency). The IDF is
obtained following standardized rules from studies of raingauge statistics over the region (based on
daily rainfall and other assumptions), and extrapolated to the rest of the land. Although this IDF curves
are just rough estimates (mainly because the lack of
rainfall data for time intervals smaller than one day),
they are nowadays the reference for river planning

Figure 5. Scheme of the loss function applied at cell scale

in the DiCHiTop model.

Figure 6. Routing scheme based on the linear diffusive

wave unit hydrograph, composing hillslope and channel
routing.

and inundability studies (ACA, 2003), being a good

option for coherence purposes.
A local rainfall warning is computed using a
30 minutes accumulation. This accumulation period
is thought to be approximately critical at the local
scale (rainfall in the own pixel), for example for
urban drainage. Thus, actual 30-min rainfall (for the
current time step and the forecasting period) is compared to the local IDF (with D = 30-min) in order to
provide the return period T (warning if T < 2 years).
Another rainfall-based warning is computed,
called the aggregated rainfall warning. It is also
based on the comparison of actual rainfall against the
reference provided by the IDF curve, but now pixel
values correspond to average rainfall over the associated upstream drainage area. Averaged rainfall from
the IDF is reduced by a scaling factor. In this case,
as each pixel is associated to a different catchment,
it is thought that the critical rainfall will be that of
an accumulation period similar to the concentration time. Thus, if Di is the approximate concentration time (computations are made for 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 6,
12 and 24 h), then the comparison is made between
the Di-accumulated rainfall and the corresponding
IDF (with D = Di), obtaining again the related return
period. As an example, Figure 7 shows the aggregated
rainfall warning provided during the event of 13 September 2006.
Related to runoff, distributed flows are compared
against design peak flows provided by planning studies as INUNCAT (the emergency flood plan in the
Catalan region) or PEFCAT (the Catalan Fluvial
Planning). These runoff-based warnings are only
provided where the hydrological model is rightly

1299

Figure 8. Scheme of the EHIMI warning system.

Figure 7. Aggregated rainfall-based alerts provided during the event of 13 September 2006, where at each pixel
it is represented the return period related to the aggregated
catchment rainfall associated to the pixel.

operational (now in the pilot Bess basin and part of

the Llobregat basin), but a methodology to gradually
extend the hydrological model to the rest of the region
is designed.
3.5

Software tools

Since one of the most important issues in flood management is how familiar and confident is the operator with the software tools, many efforts have been
focused in the improvement of the structure of the
flood forecasting system. After the implementation
of the first version of the EHIMI platform in the
ACAs control centre, a new generation of software
tools have been designed in order to fit the new and
future requirements (inside the second phase of the
EHIMI project). Experience during the FLOODsite
project and interaction with ACAs staff has guided
the new tools in two main aspects: 1) Visualization
tools, evolving to a more easy-to-use and easy-tointerpret platform; 2) Modularisation of the system,
related to the optimisation of the computations in the
server, improvements in real-time data acquisition
and storage, and operational radar data management
and processing. Figure 8 shows the scheme of the
operational system.
GenData is the data processor of punctual gauges
(raingauges, river stages, dam gates, etc). It has the
mission to adequate and synchronize time intervals
to the working resolution (10 min). Implicitly, there
is a simple filter of detection and restitution of corrupted data.
GenRad is the radar-based rainfall field generator. It houses all the different algorithms of the radar

processing chain, for each of the radars. After the

composition between pictures of different radars and
accumulation to the working time resolution, the
merging with raingauge information is carried out.
Finally the rainfall forecast technique is applied.
GenHi is the generator of hydrological products.
The main module is the hydrological model, which
produces distributed runoff at catchment scale. After
integration between catchments, several derived variables are obtained, and rainfall and runoff warnings
are computed.
VisHid is the visualisation tool. It is a modular
software able to incorporate time-variable and static
GIS information, and adapted to visualize rainfall and
runoff fields, as well as derived alerts. It is also able to
show punctual information in the form of a time-plot
(as river stage measurements or runoff forecasts).
4
4.1

RESEARCH IN THE PILOT CATCHMENT

Analisis of the nowcasting algorithm

Since flash-flood forecasting is extremely dependent

of rainfall forecasts, a radar-based rainfall forecasting
(nowcasting) technique is operationally implemented
in the EHIMI system. This nowcasting technique uses
a TREC algorithm to estimate the motion field of the
precipitation (Rinehart & Garvey, 1978) at the pixel
resolution (with continuity), and the selection of the
rainfall time variability has been made after the comparison between a sophisticated technique (S-PROG,
Seed, 2003) and a reference technique (Lagrangian
persistence), from two different perspectives (Berenguer et al., 2005): a) in rainfall terms, comparing
forecasted precipitation fields against radar measurements; b) in runoff terms, by means of the DiCHiTop distributed rainfall-runoff model, comparing
hydrographs simulated with the hydrological model

1300

using forecasted rainfall fields against hydrographs

generated with the model using the entire series of
radar measurements.
Using the multiple step ahead methodology
(WMO, 1992) in different subcatchments of the
Bess catchment (in order to evaluate scale issues),
and using the Efficiency parameter (Nash and Sutcliffe, 1970) to evaluate the performance, the main
conclusions of this study were: 1) The use of a radarbased nowcasting technique can increase the lead
time of a warning system between 20 and 80 minutes
(depending of the event), added to the response time
of the catchment; 2) The crucial factor to improve the
quality of forecasted flows is the quality of the forecasted mean areal rainfall over the basin; 3) Although
in rainfall terms the S-PROG technique can be considered superior to Lagrangian persistence, in terms
of simulated hydrographs the S-PROG filtering of
higher intensities produces inadequate results, and it
is not recommended for hydrological purposes in its
current version. Figure 9 shows the evolution of the
Efficiency parameter of the forecasted hydrographs
as a function of the lead time, in different situations
for two analysed events.

Figure 9. Evolution of the Nash Efficiency of the forecasted hydrographs as a function of the anticipation with
which hydrographs are simulated (). The different lines
represent hydrographs simulated with precipitation fields
forecasted using different techniques: a) with no forecast;
b) by Lagrangian persistence; c) by S-PROG, d) by S-PROG
using updated distributed motion fields; e) with 2 h of an
uniform field with the observed mean areal rainfall, f) with
2 h of actual radar scans.

4.2

Analisis in near real- time mode

Some events have been evaluated from the perspective of real time operation in the Bess outlet. It has
consisted in simulating the conditions of real time for
several time steps, analysing the decisions taken by
operators and the variability of results in consecutive
time steps, comparing the results obtained using the
proposed radar-based rainfall forecasting procedure,
in contrast against measured known hydrographs at
this point.
Figure 10 shows some results obtained in a particular event. The vertical dashed line, indicating the
current time, divides two stages: before the current
time, rainfall is known; after the current time, rainfall is estimated by the nowcasting technique, and
they can be compared against the reference rainfall
(albeit the comparison is made in terms of the average
catchment rainfall, loosing any spatial description).
Then, every rainfall forecast produces a hydrograph
simulation, and they can be compared together and
against the reference hydrograph (simulated by the
model using the reference rainfall) and also against
the observed hydrograph. Moreover, it can be made
a comparison against the model simulation without

Figure 10. Hydrograph simulations for the 19/07/2001

event (MOCA river gauge), from rainfall forecasts given
by TREC with Lagrangian persistence (nowcasting) and
without any rainfall forecast (no prev) for different current
times.

1301

any rainfall forecast, in order to see the importance of

providing some rainfall forecast.
We have tried to see whether the integrated
model is helpful for forecasters and decision makers. After the evaluation of the integrated model for
some events, we have arrived to some conclusions.
In general, it has been observed that it is difficult to
achieve good runoff forecasts in the very beginning
of the rainfall event. This can be explained because
rainfall observed by radar is far from the catchment
and possibly affected by distance errors (sometimes
out of the radar range). Thus, runoff underestimates
are common in this period of the events.
As the current time approximates to the rainfall
peak, the nowcasting technique can forecast it better.
There are considerable differences between events
(it is acknowledged that stratiform rainfall produces
better estimates than convective rainfall). However,
as can be seen in Figure 10, it is not necessary that
rainfall forecasts are very well estimated to produce
soundly flow forecasts (since the cathment acts as a
rainfall filtering), and the nowcasting technique can
preserve adequately the mean catchment rainfall in
many cases. In any case, it has been observed that
the reaction time is usually increased a minimum of
30 minutes, which can be important in these flashflood catchments.
Although the experience has been quite positive,
there are still many issues to solve. There exists few
cases where the nowcasting technique does not work
properly (mainly due to the estimation of the motion
field), providing wrong alerts that are removed in the
next time step (next rainfall forecast). Then, the operator needs to wait some time in order to be sure before
to take a decision. There are also many problems
related to model simulations reliability, that needs an
adequate quantification and interpretation of runoff
forecast uncertainty. In this sense, first attempts to
quantify in an operational way both measured and
forecasted rainfall uncertainty have been made by
means of producing ensembles (German et al., 2006;
Berenguer et al., 2006b), taking into account the
intrinsic nature of the spatial structure of radar error.
But the global modelling uncertainty problem is currently a challenge.
5

CONCLUSIONS

The EHIMI flood forecasting system, operational in

the control centre of the Catalan Water Agency, is presented. One of the features of this system is its careful
radar data processing scheme, and the computation
of distributed warnings based on surface rainfall
accumulations and runoff forecasts at high spatial
resolution. These risk warnings are related to hazard
probability (synthesised in the return period), but in

the future they will progress to include the concept of

vulnerability.
Rainfall-based warnings are provided in the whole
area of Catalunya, while runoff based warnings are
only provided where the hydrological model is rightly
operational (now in the pilot Bess basin and part
of the Llobregat basin). A methodology to gradually
extend the hydrological model to the rest of the region
is designed and it is expected to be operational in few
years.
A radar based rainfall nowcasting algorithm has
been tested and implemented, with the aim to extend
in the future the forecasting lead time with other
information (weather forecast models).
Experience gained during FLOODsite has been
very fruitful to improve the EHIMI system. Completing the system with other tools (reservoir management) and enriching warnings with an adequate
quantification of runoff uncertainty will provide a
really operational and useful tool for water and flood
risk management. This is our challenge for the next
three years.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The EHIMI project is mainly funded by the Water
Agency of Catalunya (ACA), and related research
has been partially funded by the EC projects
FLOODsite (GOCE-CT-2004-505420), HYDRATE
(GOCE-CT-2005-037024) and EWASE (ERAC-CT2004-515742). The Spanish Meteorological Agency
(AEMET, formerly INM) is acknowledged for providing radar data used in our research. Clavegueram
de Barcelona S.A. (CLABSA) provides useful data to
complete the hydrological information in the Bess
catchment.
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