Data-driven Flood Analysis and Decision Support

Abstract. Flood management is a critical issue when facing natural disasters. In current practice, the evaluation of potential threat areas is a multi-disciplinary task. It requires much communication and coordination between institutions such as the meteorological unit and hydrological unit, which makes the process time-consuming and less efficient. This study developed a system called FloodViz, which integrates all the associated tasks. FloodViz collects the rainfall forecasts from the meteorological agency, analyzes the datasets of rainfall forecasts using the rainfall threshold to evaluate the potential flood areas, and then organizes the results through data visualization to make them user-friendly for decision makers. To validate FloodViz, we tested this system during Typhoon Feng-wong. The results showed that FloodViz can reduce the time spent during the flood management process by 17 minutes. Based on the results, FloodViz can improve the operating efficiency of decision-making and help decision makers in their flood response.