RAPHAEL free access web site

Runoff and Atmospheric Processes for flood HAzard forEcasting and controL

contract ENV 4-CT97-0552

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The Project Objectives

The basic objective of the RAPHAEL project, as indicated by the acronym is to develop, implement and demonstrate the use of coupled meteorological and hydrological models at the regional scale in order to improve flood forecasting and management in complex mountain watersheds.

With this guideline further objectives are delineated as follows:
to apply coupled atmospheric-hydrological models and carry out a multi-scenario modelling experiment to show the potential use of advanced flood forecasts in view of the reservoir regulations during hazardous flood events;
to investigate the benefits achievable in atmospheric models by introducing hydrological feedback with detailed land-surface schemes, including snow and ice dynamics;
to validate meteorological data generated by Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models and meteorological observations by means of runoff measurements and distributed hydrologic water balance calculations;
to investigate the benefits of remotely-sensed land surface parameters, state variables and fluxes (e.g., land cover, soil moisture, snow cover, evapotranspiration) as related to sub-grid parameterization of both atmospheric and hydrologic models;
to improve techniques and tools for scale-adaptation of observed and simulated variables, with particular reference to the areal distribution of rainfall, snow cover, and land-surface-atmosphere fluxes.