Flood Forecasting: A Global Perspective

Flood Forecasting: A Global Perspective describes flood forecast systems and operations as they currently exist at national and regional centers around the globe, focusing on the technical aspects of flood forecast systems. This book includes the details of data flow, what data is used, quality control, the hydrologic and hydraulic models used, and the unique problems of each country or system, such as glacial dam failures, ice jams, sparse data, and ephemeral streams and rivers. Each chapter describes the system, including details about its strengths and weaknesses, and covers lessons learned. This helpful resource facilitates sharing knowledge that will lead to improvements of existing systems and provides a valuable reference to those wishing to develop new forecast systems by drawing on best practices.

• Covers global systems allowing readers to see a worldwide perspective with different approaches used by existing flood forecast systems
• Provides historical coverage allowing readers to understand why forecast systems have developed as they have and to see how specific systems have dealt with common problems encountered
• Presents a vision of what appears to be the future of hydrologic forecasting and difficulties facing hydrologic forecasting
• Provides a helpful resource to facilitate improvements to existing systems based on a best practices approach

Dr Thomas Adamas has 35+ years of experience in hydrology, including twenty years of real-time operational hydrologic forecasting experience at the NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS), Ohio River Forecast Center (OHRFC), including model parameter estimation, hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, and model calibration. 

Previously Dr. Adams was a Research Hydrologist at the NOAA/NWS Office of Hydrology/Hydrology Laboratory and a Visiting Scientist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) at the NOAA/NWS National Water Center. His experience includes the development and implementation of the Ohio River Community HEC-RAS Model, operational probabilistic/ensemble hydrologic forecasting, precipitation estimation and analysis, land surface/atmosphere interaction, and impact of global climate change on water resources. 

He is involved in on-going international hydrometeorological consulting and is a member of the American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Soil Science Society of America.

The unifying theme of Dr. Thomas Pagano's career has been using operational river forecasts to bring the benefits of science to the public. He studied Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA and obtained his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Soroosh Sorooshian in 2004. He then worked as an operational river forecaster with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service National Water and Climate Center in Portland, Oregon, forecasting the Colorado River, Rio Grande, Arkansas River and for Alaska. In 2008 he joined the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation to lead a research program in flood forecasting. He has been the leader of the national flood modelling group within the Hazards Warnings and Forecasts division of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology since 2013.