New monitoring and prediction technologies for cooperative risk management

Project title

Extreme events in medium and small catchments (EXTRUSO) Project homepage

Fundingg

© ESF

EU ESF 'Nachwuchsforschergruppen' program

Motivation

The ongoing global warming caused by climate change leads to an intensification of the hydrological circle and with that to a higher variability of our future climate. Thus, an increasing likelihood of intense rain events and consequent hydrological extreme events has to be expected. These usually small-scale extreme events are difficult to monitor. Neither the Saxon gauge network, nor the precipitation measurement network are dense enough to monitor and predict those events. Precipitation radar data is to inaccurate and remote sensing data and numerical weather prediction are too coarsely resolved. This leads to a lack of flood warning systems for extreme events in small catchments. This is where EXTRUSO steps in: Innovative techniques for spatio-temporal high resolution monitoring and simulation of small-scaled extreme events will be developed and tested in small and medium catchments. In a cooperation between the chairs of Hydrology, Meteorology, Geoinformatics and Photogrammetry, new types of operational monitoring systems will be developed. Existing monitoring networks will be densified using modern low-cost sensors, specific remote sensing data and geographical information systems. Additionally, historical analyses and predictive modelling of small-scale extreme events with different climate scenarios will support to predict the expected effects of climate change. The developed information will serve as a base for upcoming early warning systems and future adjustment strategies.

AIMS

High resolution digital terrain models will be generated using the combination of different photogrammetric processes (structure-from-motion, water level extraction). A camera and a compact LIDAR will be mounted on an UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and on an UMW (unmanned water vehicle). Detailed information on land use will be derived from satellite data, geometrically high resolved UAV-data and from administrative geographic data. The UMW will additionally be equipped with a 360° camera for mapping of the surroundings and an underwater camera to gather information about geometry and structure of the bottom of the stream. A change detection based on recordings before and after extreme events will allow conclusions about the mechanisms in hydro-systems.  With an automatic recognition of water lines in image data, a spatio-temporal densification of gauge networks will be achieved. This is especially important for the monitoring of small catchments where the number of gauges is limited.

Related Publications

Project PartnerS

• Prof. Dr. Niels Schütze, Dipl.-Hydrol. Diana Spieler, Dipl.-Phys. Robert Mietrach, M.Sc. Thomas Singer (Chair of Hydrology)

• Prof. Dr. Lars Bernard, Dr.-Ing. Stefan Wiemann, M.Sc. Robert Krüger (Chair of Geoinformatics)

• Prof. Dr. Christian Bernhofer, Dr. Firas Aljanabi, M.Sc. Thanh Thi Luong (Chair of Meteorology)

Contact

• Anette Eltner,  Hannes Sardemann