Objectives

The aim or ultimate objective of IMPRINTS is to contribute to the reduction of loss of life and economic damage through the improvement of the preparedness and the operational risk management of flash flood and debris flow (from now on FF & DF) generating events, as well as contributing to sustainable development through reducing damages to the environment. To achieve this ultimate objective, the project is oriented to produce methods and tools to be used by practitioners of the emergency agencies and utility companies responsible for the management of FF & DF risks and associated effects. Impacts of future changes, including climatic, land use and socioeconomic changes will be also analysed, in order to provide guidelines for mitigation and adaptation measures.

Specifically, the consortium will develop three methodologies of different complexities to provide FF & DF forecasting and warnings: (i) an early warning FF & DF system based on simplified calculations, (ii) an integrated probabilistic forecasting FF & DF system, and (iii) a probabilistic rule-based forecasting system adapted to the operational use by practitioners. These systems will be tested on five selected flash flood prone areas, two located in mountainous catchments in the Alps, and three in Mediterranean catchments. The practitioner partners of IMPRINTS, namely the risk management authorities and the utility company managers in charge of emergency management in these areas, will supervise these tests. The development of such systems will be carried out using, and capitalising on, the results of the previous and ongoing research on forecasting and warning systems for FF & DF, in which several of the partners have already played a prominent role.

One major result of the project will be a prototype of the operational platform including the tools and methodologies developed under the project. This prototype will be designed under the premise of its ultimate commercialisation and use worldwide.

The consortium, covering all the actors involved in the complex chain of FF & DF forecasting, has been carefully selected to ensure the achievement of this objective