The Extreme Rainfall and Flood Monitoring System for Pakistan is a web-service developed and implemented under HEC-TDF Project No. TDF02-117 at University of Agriculture Faisalabad for monitoring of extreme rainfall events in Pakistan, as well as peak flows for specific river catchments.

Climate change effects

Climate change effects in the form of increasing global temperatures and extreme rainfall events are increasing the frequency and intensity of hydro-meteorological hazards like floods both globally as well as in Pakistan. Although the country faces water shortage situation due to semi- arid to arid climate in most of its parts, the snowmelt in summer and heavy monsoon rains in the subsequent rainy months create flood situation in the rivers during months of July to September.

Proper Management of Flood

Proper management of flood involves timely and accurate prediction of extreme rainfall events and monitoring of resulting heavy flows. This information helps the management authorities launching successful relief operations and securing people’s life, agriculture and infrastructure. This project is aimed at developing initially a rainfall data based web tool for Pakistan to provide extreme rainfall alerts in real time. Rainfall is the basic and single most important parameter, which gives a very good idea of any possible flooding situation in the absence of a proper hydrologic model. Therefore, based on critical rainfall values or thresholds, such system can provide really helpful alerts regarding extreme events. However, it does not make hydrologic modeling less important, which provides complete quantification of flows considering all climatic parameters and catchment characteristics. Therefore, hydrologic modeling will be performed for different rivers’ catchments in the subsequent phase of the project. The developed hydrologic models for specific rivers will be integrated with the already developed rainfall based web tool. The project outcomes in the form of extreme rainfall and possible flood alerts may be helpful for emergency management departments to plan relief activities and reduce flood damages.