Ensemble Flood Forecasting in India: Current and Future Prospects

Flood forecasting plays a key role in the reduction of economic as well as life losses and is considered a challenging task in hydrology. Controlling the occurrence of extreme flood events is not in our hands, but deteriorating the losses is still conceivable. In India, the flood forecasting for most of the basins is based on the deterministic approach which needs to be strengthened for the early warnings and relief measure strategies. Over the world, the focus of the hydrologists and researchers is shifting in the direction of the implementation of ensembles of numerical weather predictions (NWP) for operational flood forecasting. India has made great achievements in building an ensemble prediction system for weather forecasting. Precipitation forecast is available at several spatial and temporal resolutions, but still, it needs improvement in the case of urban and smaller catchments. The paper discusses the need for the development of an integrated approach to hydrologic ensemble prediction system using meteorological forecasts, hydrological and hydraulic modeling, and post-processing for reliable early flood warning systems in India.