On February 20-21, 2019, the first-ever National Flood Forecasting meeting took place to begin dialogue between professionals in Canada to demonstrate the capability of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) predication systems, while highlighting new and important research in the area of flood and hydrology forecasting. ECCC spearheaded the meeting as part of renewed funding and efforts to the common goal. Both Global Water Futures and FloodNET, NSERC funded research programs, partook in this meeting.

The two-day conference, focused on a few key thematic areas. The first day focused on existing state-of-the-art research in hydrology and flood predication in the academic community. While the second day looked at existing and tools currently available to practitioners and the future direction ECCC is planning on going over the next 5 years.

The balance of the two days was dedicated to provincial, territorial, hydro and private sector presenters outlining their respective current hydrological forecasting systems.  This highlighted the various needs across the country for input information to inform decision-making.  

Three consolidated key-messages and outcomes resulted of the 2-day workshop.

1. Provincial and federal governments are both investing in hydrometeorological and streamflow forecasting; it makes sense to realise economies of scale by pooling resources to create a Canada-wide water forecasting system and to develop a community of practice around this.
2. The USA uses a single model and a centralized national system. In Canada, numerous models and data systems are used, hence there is a need for coordinated effort, which may include establishment of a National Hydrological Centre or Canada Water Security Centre comprised of federal agencies, provincial agencies and academic contributors.
3. This meeting was very important in moving towards national coordination of streamflow forecasting and in advising ECCC and GWF and so should be an annual event

Dr. Pomeroy closed the discussion with a few key observations as outlined below.

• It would be useful to systematically share information on what practices are working, what information sources are becoming available and what improvements are needed. GWF could help to facilitate such regular discussions in the future, and in-person meetings are quite valuable. We are happy to consider this the “user group” for the GWF Core Modelling and Prediction Team.
• There seem to be common needs for specialized information on river ice dynamics and snowpack – for snowmelt driven and rainfall-on-snow driven flow events and water supply forecasts. GWF has new instruments – snow sonar, Airborne LiDAR, UAVs and is developing a satellite with GNSS that may help.
• It would seem that a common and more efficient approach to data flow and characterizing river basins for model setup and parameterization could be useful and we would be interested in contributing to this.
• GWF will work toward enhancing models for forecasting systems and is looking for partnerships to test and implement these systems for the provinces, industry and ECCC. In some cases a cooperative river basin basis would be efficient and effective to adopt for transboundary waters and we can work with all parties to help that happen. We also are keen on feedback as to what systems are needed and how things are working.

To download the presentations from the Flood Forecasting Workshop. Click on the button below.

• Download Presentations

Day 1

Day 2