Results from the NWS Flash Flood Summit: A community-based initiative for modernized operational flash flood modeling and forecasting

The Flash Flood Summit was the first major national collaborative effort to leverage the National Water Center as a catalyst for Integrated Water Resources Science and Services (IWRSS). The Flash Flood Summit established a vision and strategy for the tools, models and techniques needed for stakeholders faced with decision making activities during high-impact, rapidly developing hydrologic events. The community of practices established subsequent the summit represents a unique opportunity for a public-private partnership to produce new capabilities for a Weather Ready Nation.

The Flash Flood Summit brought together representatives from multiple government agencies and academia at the National Water Center on the University of Alabama's Tuscaloosa campus in September of 2014. This summit presented an opportunity to convene hydrologic and social science experts to chart a path for building flash flood capabilities in the future.

This presentation will discuss the outcomes of the Flash Flood Summit, that include providing: a framework for research priorities for what we need to accomplish the vision; definition of the flash flood requirements for this end to end national water model and identification of the development status of potential solutions; understanding and identification of the social science needs to ensure these requirements connect to people; and a mechanism to establish a community of practice to advance flash flood predictive science and services.