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Case studies in support of European Policy

Mark Dowell, Peter Salamon, Jürgen Vogt, Julian Wilson, Institute for Environment and Sustainability

Themes

•  Initial overview of possible policy areas • Detailed analyses for two examples – Droughts & Floods

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1st Priority of the Commission’s 2009 Adaptation White Paper “developing the knowledge base” –> Clearing House Mechanism = CLIMATE-ADAPT

At the launch in March 2012, JRC provided 81 of the 120 maps of climate change indicator information to CLIMATE-ADAPT. Maps covering floods, droughts, agriculture, forests & forest fires, soils & climate are provided to users directly from the JRC in real time.

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Policy Application CDR

Generation Earth Observation

Climate Risk Management!

Floods Surface water AMSR-E and TRMM, Visible images - GMES emergency mapping service

Meteorology/ Precipitation

ECMWF forecasts /analyses

Climate Risk Management!

Flash floods/ Landslides

Landslide scar/ surface water

Visible images- GMES emergency mapping service

Climate Risk Management/ Adaptation

Droughts NDWI MODIS FaPAR MERIS, Spot-VEGETATION SSPI Nimbus-7, DMSP SPI In-situ synop, GPCC Soil Moisture ECMWF-Lisflood, (SMOS)

Adaptation Sea level rise SSH Poseidon, Jason, Adaptation! Agriculture Meteorology/

Precipitation, FaPAR

Met forecasts /analyses, In-situ, MERIS, Spot-VEGETATION

Adaptation! Forestry Meteorology/ Precipitation, FaPAR

Met forecasts /analyses, In-situ, MERIS, Spot-VEGETATION

Adaptation Resilience of built environments

? ?

Adaptation! Air quality Short-lived Gases

Mitigation REDD Landcover Landsat, LDCM, Sentinel-2 !!

Droughts: Policy Context

•  EU: Directive 2000/60/EC Establishing Framework for Community action in the field of Water Policy •  EU: Communication 2007 414 “Addressing the challenge of Water Scarcity and Droughts in the European Union” – European Drought Observatory • Worldwide: Communication 2011 637 “Increasing the impact of EU development policy: An agenda for Change”

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•  Monitoring & forecast of drought in W. Europe (Africa & S. America research projects),

•  1971-Present day observations of precipitation, soil moisture, moisture anomaly, NDWI, fAPAR, snow pack & short term forecasts,

•  Current data available via OGC compliant WMS,

•  System description & metadata available,

http://edo.jrc.europa.eu/

European Drought Observatory

Combined Drought Indicator (SPI + Soil Moisture + fAPAR) for 21-30 Jan 2013

FCDR Current/Future: Sentinel-3 …

FCDR Past: MERIS, SPOT …

FCDR Current/Future: SPOT-Vegetation ...

FaPAR for Droughts

Change

Ancillary data SPI, Soil Moisture, NDWI, Snow Pack

FaPAR

FaPAR

FaPAR + SPI + Soil moisture & other indicators

ELIS/EDO

EDO

EDO

Drought news in Europe

Floods: Policy Context

•  EU: Directive 2000/60/EC Establishing Framework for Community action in the field of Water Policy •  EU: Communication 2008 130 “Reinforcing the Union's Disaster Response Capacity” •  EU/Worldwide: Communication 2010 600 “Towards a stronger European disaster response: the role of civil protection and humanitarian aid.” • Worldwide: Communication 2009 147 “EU Strategy for Supporting Disaster Risk Reduction in Developing Countries” • EU: Regulation 2002 2012 Establishing the European Union Solidarity Fund

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Flood Risk Assessment

adaptation

climate scenarios

water use + management

s o c i o - e c o n o m i c d r i v e r s

land use

climate

hydrology – water use

land use scenarios

LISFLOOD

vulnerability

hazard

risk

exposure

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Assessment of EU Solidarity Fund requests

EU Solidarity Fund (EUSF) was founded in 2002. Its objective is to provide assistance to EU member states when large-scale disasters occur.

JRC evaluates the EUSF requests using very high resolution satellite images to map flooded areas. •  EU Space Imaging: Quickbird (0.6 metres

panchromatic, 2.8 metres multispectral) •  EU Space Imaging: Worldview (0.5 metres

panchromatic, 2.0 metres multispectral) •  Eurimage: Geoeye-1 (0.4 metres

panchromatic, 1.65 metres multispectral) •  Eurimage: Ikonos (0.8 metres

panchromatic, 3.2 metres multispectral)

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Use of satellite data in the European Flood Awareness System

Research study: Assimilation of MODIS snow cover data in a hydrological model 1

Aim: to improve the simulation of snow-melt driven floods Results: assimilating snow cover data does not significantly improve simulation of snow-melt driven floods principally because snow cover does not contain any information on the amount of water stored in the snow (same problem as surface water area) Future research: Use of snow water equivalent (SWE) data instead (H-SAF2) – Problem: deriving SWE from satellites is a product under development – requires still severe quality checking

Planned research: Merging H-SAF2 satellite precipitation with observed precipitation at meteo stations Aim: to improve initial conditions of the hydrological model for flood forecasting at large scale (Europe) Results: …ongoing

1 www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/8/1329/2011/ 2 http://hsaf.meteoam.it/

Thank You

Acknowledgements: Mark Dowell, Luc Feyen, Nadine Gobron, Tom de Groeve, Diego Magni, Monica Robustelli, Peter Salamon, Jutta Thielen, Juergen Vogt, Julian Wilson. Joint Research Centre