Addressing the Scale Problem for Urban Weather Warnings: Hazard Impact Modelling in the U.K. Natural Hazards Partnership

Recent advances in km-scale weather prediction have opened up the possibility of credible storm warnings for urban areas, covering flash flood, extreme wind and winter weather hazards. However, for effective deployment of resources, emergency managers are looking for street block level information, while the spatial predictability of intense storms a few hours ahead is in the region of 10km at best. This talk will describe how the UK Natural Hazards Partnership is bridging this gap by linking expertise and tools from different disciplines to generate Hazard Impact Models (HIMs) that produce real-time risk maps addressing the specific concerns of urban and suburban responders. Results will be presented from an early version of the surface water flooding HIM that was successfully demonstrated at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and an update will be given on progress towards operational implementation.