Rain Field Forecasting for Floodwise

Thunderstorms are part of everyday life in the humid Queensland conditions and often result in devastating consequences for both the community and the economy. The Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF) is helping the Bureau of Meteorology to develop software applications that provide a one-hour forecast rain field for thunderstorms detected by the weather watch radar. 

The predicted rain field can be used as an input to the Brisbane City Council Floodwise system. With detailed forecast rain maps, weather forecasters will be able to better track and analyse a thunderstorm's movements, and provide the community with more accurate and up-to-date storm warnings.

Figure 1: One-hour forecast rain field based on radar data from the 16 November 2008 storm in Brisbane. The coloured scale represents the predicted rainfall (in mm) for the next hour.

Background

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) uses the Thunderstorm Identification Tracking Analysing and Nowcasting (TITAN) software application (Dixon and Wiener 1993) to analyse radar data and automatically identify and track storm cells. The application has been deployed in Australia for a number of years and many Australians check the radar animations on the BOM website when bad weather is predicted.

This project uses the output of the TITAN calculations to provide a one-hour forecast rain field. The path of the storm cells can be predicted by determining the trajectory of each storm cell or by statistical analysis of past similar storms. Depending on the storm characteristics derived from the radar images such as speed, direction, size, change in rainfall rate, rainfall rate, it is possible to predict the size and the rainfall one hour in advance as shown in Figure 1.

This one-hour forecast rain field can then be used as an input to the Brisbane City Council Floodwise project that uses rain gauges across the city to monitor floods. This will identify areas that may flood, flooded roads, flash flooding and possible tidal inundation before they happen. Timely alerts can be sent so that resources and emergency responders can be deployed before the water rises too high.

Figure 2: User interface showing rain field forecasts and/or storm histories. Additional options are available when clicking on a storm ellipse.

Participants

Joshua Soderholm and Nick Beaton - QCIF
Prof. Bernard Pailthorpe, Franz Eilert - QCIF
Ken Morris - Brisbane City Council - Floodwise
Bureau of Meteorology
Brisbane City Council

Contacts

Prof. Bernard Pailthorpe – CEO, QCIF
Franz Eilert - Industry Outreach Manager, QCIF