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Decision support system based on the history of flood and flash flood events in Romania

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Abstract

A lightweight decision support system is presented, oriented also to statistics, useful for assisting weather forecasters and other parties interested in hazard assessment associated with extreme weather. The system can be used in enhancing the warning procedures, ahead of a flood or a flash flood whose probability of occurrence is based on the history of such events in a particular region. A software application has been built that integrates meteorological data with Geographical Information Systems procedures, in a unified informational aggregate. This system stores various types of data related to flood and flash flood events, so it is able to provide the user with any piece of information related to a documented event. It also catalogues any information that users provide it with, to further document a past, or an ongoing event. The system can be used to raise awareness of forecasters over a particular context, before a possibly hazardous situation, and it can also offer automatic warnings and suggestions to those interested in disaster mitigation.

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Acknowledgments

Work on this paper has been supported by a contract with the University of Bucharest, where the author has completed his Ph.D. Thesis, under the POSDRU/88/1.5/S/56668 Project. We thank the Department of Database Design and Maintenance at the National Meteorological Administration of Romania, for providing us with essential climatological data sets. We are grateful for, and honoured by the attention of anonymous Reviewers who have helped this paper gain in quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Meteorological Administration, 97 Bucuresti-Ploiesti, Bucharest, Romania

    Victor Stefanescu

  2. Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, P.O.BOX MG-11, Magurele, 077125, Bucharest, Romania

    Victor Stefanescu

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  1. Victor Stefanescu
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Correspondence to Victor Stefanescu.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

11069_2012_479_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 1 The “Insert event” page of the main interface. The operator is providing essential information about a new event (PDF 218 kb)

11069_2012_479_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 2 The “Event details” page of the main interface. Information was retrieved about a known event (PDF 295 kb)

11069_2012_479_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 3 The “Current context” page of the main interface. An events context was defined by the operator and raw statistics were presented on the left side of the image (PDF 388 kb)

11069_2012_479_MOESM4_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 4 The “Events list” page of the main interface. An event was selected, which is documented by additional files, as signalled by the icon before the title (PDF 578 kb)

11069_2012_479_MOESM5_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 5 The NowcastingMapper module. The operator has selected a region exposed to severe weather, and the list of settlements within that area was subsequently displayed, along with their territorial-administrative identifiers (PDF 396 kb)

11069_2012_479_MOESM6_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 6 The GISAssist module. The settlements (magenta polygons) are displayed along other geo-referenced features within the area previously selected in NowcastingMapper (PDF 242 kb)

11069_2012_479_MOESM7_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 7 Routes to facilties closest to an incident, on a 50-km radius. The corresponding GIS layer file was built by GISAssist, using data exported from the main interface in a GISAssist closest facilities project, and then was displayed in ArcMap(R)(TM) (PDF 381 kb)

11069_2012_479_MOESM8_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 8 The Facility Creator module. In the Internet browser (background) a place was selected on a map displayed via the Google Maps system. The coordinates of that place were brought into the module window (foreground) so that they can be used to define the location of a facility of interest (PDF 864 kb)

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Stefanescu, V. Decision support system based on the history of flood and flash flood events in Romania. Nat Hazards 65, 2331–2352 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0479-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0479-8

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