Brief communication: Impact forecasting could substantially improve the emergency management of deadly floods: case study July 2021 floods in Germany

Abstract

Floods affect more people than any other natural hazard; thus flood warning and disaster management are of utmost importance. However, the operational hydrological forecasts do not provide information about affected areas and impact but only discharge and water levels at gauges. We show that a simple hydrodynamic model operating with readily available data is able to provide highly localized information on the expected flood extent and impacts, with simulation times enabling operational flood warning. We demonstrate that such an impact forecast would have indicated the deadly potential of the 2021 flood in western Germany with sufficient lead time.