A review of the operational Romanian Hydrologic Forecast Modeling System Implementation and its Relationship to the newly available Community WRF-HYDRO

On behalf of the government of Romania, Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems (BAMS) implemented and calibrated an advanced hydrological forecast modeling system to help warn and evacuate areas under imminent and near-term threat of destructive flooding. The overall forecast suite includes four distinct kinds of modeling systems: a classic lumped-basin lag/K routed approach represented by a recent version of the NWSRFS, a semi-distributed headwater catchment-scale model represented by TOPLATS coupled to a synthetic unit hydrograph, a novel fully distributed very high resolution explicit stream-flow model coupled to an advanced LSM with explicit overland flow routing and a bucket-style base-flow sub-model, and a flash-flood guidance system. All four of these models were calibrated and have now been fully operational at the National Institute of Hydrology and Water Management (INHGA) for well-over a year. This talk will provide a review of the first three of these operational systems as representative of commercially-based hydrologic decision-support systems. More focus will be given toward the explicit streamflow modeling system jointly developed with the NCAR-Research Applications Lab (RAL). RAL's recent release of the WRF-HYDRO modeling system features much of the same underlying algorithmic science developed for the Romanian implementation with BAMS scientists. The ability of such multi-model operational systems to improve flood/flash-flood preparation and reduce injury and loss-of-life will be discussed in relationship to extreme weather and the built environment, particularly because so many small Romanian villages are built directly on the banks of streams and rivers.