Implementation of Forecast Flood Inundation Mapping Services for the Nation

The NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) has a mission to provide weather, water and climate data, forecasts, warnings, and impact-based decision support services for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy. Emergency Management partners across the nation have expressed a critical need for the provision of more detailed flood forecasts and for event-driven flood inundation mapping (FIM) as a high value source of actionable information to prepare, mitigate, and respond to flood impacts. In response, the NWS National Water Center, in coordination with NWS River Forecast Centers (RFC) and Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) and Federal and academic partners, has developed high-resolution inundation modeling capabilities providing geo-referenced visualizations of forecast flooding extent at the continental scale.

NOAA/NWS is in its second year of a four year effort to revolutionize water prediction capabilities by providing these forecast FIM services for nearly 100% of the U.S. population, covering over 3 million miles of the national stream network. This information represents a profound expansion in the neighborhood-level information available to the public, emergency managers, and the weather enterprise community including broadcast meteorologists.

This presentation will highlight the progress and lessons learned from the initiation of services to the first 10% of the nation in September 2023 through the current expansion to over 30% of the population as of September 2024. Services in year one of the implementation included portions of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Texas. In year two, services expanded to include much of the Tennessee, Ohio, and lower Mississippi basins, portions of the Pacific Northwest, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands representing the first OCONUS region. Over the remaining 2 years, services will expand to cover nearly 100% of the U.S. population.