WEB-BASED FLOOD INFORMATION SYSTEM:

CASE STUDY OF SOMES MARE, ROMANIA

Adrian Almoradie1*, Andreja Jonoski1, Florin Stoica2, Dimitri Solomatine1, Ioana Popescu1

1Department of Integrated Water Systems and Governance, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water

Education, P.O. Box 3015, 2601 DA Delft, The Netherlands2Romanian National Water Authority, Somes-Tisa Branch, Cluj, Romania

Abstract

This paper presents research into conceptualisation, design and implementation of an innovative

web-based virtual environment for flood information sharing and dissemination. A system intended

to be used by flood management authorities and potentially-affected citizens is demonstrated. Latest

technological advances for collection, archiving and sharing of environmental data using web-based

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) are used for system implementation. Flood-related data and

models are embedded in the system.

The system was developed for the Some Mare catchment in Romania and it is aimed to serve as a

portal for awareness raising through flood information sharing and dissemination that would

increase local capacity of the communities for dealing with floods. This will enable the citizens and

stakeholders to understand the areas exposed to flood risk and to equip them with the necessary

knowledge on flood risk assessment and management. The platform is capable to assimilate instant

feedback and relevant information from citizens and stakeholders. In future, the system is envisaged

to include components for flood forecasting and warning.

This system was developed within the enviroGRIDS EU FP7 research project.

Keywords: flood information dissemination, stakeholder participation, spatial data infrastructure,

Somes Mare, web-based application

1. Introduction

1* Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed: E-mail address: a.almoradie@unesco-ihe.org; tel: +31 15 2151715; fax: +31 15 2122921

Historically flood-related disasters have been one of the major causes of loss of lives, property

and loss of livelihoods. It is expected that the hazards induced by flood related disasters will

increase in relation to rapid urbanisation, development, increase of population and climate change.

Reducing the adverse consequences of floods is commonly carried out within flood risk

management (FRM) frameworks aimed at long term planning and design, or flood event

management.

Flood information dissemination is considered as one of the important components for FRM.

The effort of disseminating flood risk information raises citizens' awareness, which will in turn

increase local capacity of the communities to deal with floods. Furthermore, this will enable the

citizens and stakeholders to understand the areas exposed to flood risk and to equip them with the

necessary knowledge on flood risk assessment and management.

Decision makers and experts also recognised the importance of involving the stakeholders and

citizens in FRM. Since stakeholders and citizens have diverse values and knowledge of their local

environment empowering them to participate will lead to a sustainable FRM decisions and

measures (Abbott and Jonoski, 2001; APFM, 2006; Reed, 2008). Moreover, proper integration of

local information and scientific knowledge may significantly improve FRM. Such integrated

information becomes more relevant for affected citizens and can be disseminated using web or

mobile phone applications (see, for an example on water quality information dissemination

Jonoski et al., 2012).

Flood information dissemination and stakeholder/citizens participation in FRM is in line with

the Flood Directive (FD) and the Water Framework Directive (WFD) established by the European

Commision. The WFD, which was established in 2000 aims at sustainable management of all

coastal waters, inland surface waters and groundwater in the European Union and its member states

(EC Directive, 2000). The Flood Directive encourages the European Union and it’s member states

to have FRM plans that incorporate public information and consultation (EC Directive, 2007).

Following these legislative requirements and recommendations flood management authorities

face new challenges on raising citizens' awareness by involving them in FRM. In addition to the

challenges related to effective and efficient modes of involvement, the task becomes complex

because of the amount of flood related information that needs to be managed (collecting, archiving

and sharing) for this purpose.

With the advancement of computer and information and communications technology (ICT) the

World Wide Web has revolutionized the way our society communicates and accesses information.

It is foreseen that with such advancement in ICT a web-based environment will provide innovative

solutions to address the challenges in flood information sharing, dissemination and participation.

Decision makers and experts have long envisioned the use of web-based environment for

remote access to a decision support system (DSS) (e.g Bhargava and Krishna, 1998). In the field

of environmental management, several web-based systems were developed for the management of

watershed (e.g Choi et al., 2005), groundwater (e.g Khelifi et al., 2006; Jonoski, 2002) and surface

water quality (e.g Jonoski et al., 2012). There are also a number of web-based system that have

been developed for flood risk management, however most of these systems fall short in addressing

the users' (citizens) needs/requirements and applications usability.

The present paper introduces an innovative web-based system for flood information sharing

and dissemination. This Flood Information System (FIS)was developed for the Somes Mare

catchment in Romania and it is intended to be used by flood management authorities and

potentially-affected citizens. The system implements the latest technological advances for

collection, archiving and sharing of environmental data, using web-based Spatial Data

Infrastructure (SDI).

This system was developed within the EU FP7 research project, enviroGRIDS. The main

objective of this research project (involving 30 partners from 15 countries) is capacity development

for environmental research aimed at policy development, as well as practical applications in the

countries of the Black Sea Catchment.

The article is organised as follows: Section 2 presents the Somes Mare case study description.

The solution approach introduced in section 3 presents the modeling approach, FIS conceptual

framework and design, and technologies for development. Section 4 presents the Somes Mare FIS

demonstrator. The final section discusses the advantages of using this approach, development

experiences and future development.

2. Case study description

The Somes Mare catchment (fig. 1) is located in the northern part of Romania, and it is part of

the Somes catchment. Somes river is formed through the confluence of Somes Mare (Big Somes)

and Somes Mic (Small Somes) in Dej city. Downstream of Dej, the river has a cascade of dams,

small dams and weirs that protects the area from flooding. However, on the Somes Mare river there

are no structures that will mitigate floods and they are occurring more often. In the upstream part

of the catchment it has two rivers that join in a confluence in the town of Dej. These two rivers are

the Somes Mare (Big Somes) and Somes Mic (Small Somes). The Somes river flows downstream

from Dej to a confluence that joins with river Tisza (fig. 1).

DejBistrita reservoir

Fig. 1. Somes Mare catchment

The case study is focused on the Somes Mare because of its large potential to flooding. The

Somes Mare catchment has a total area of 5078 km2 and the river length is approx. 136 km. It has a

complex terrain having an elevation that ranges from 400 m to 2280 m.

The annual average discharge of Somes River in Dej is 74.1 m3/s, to which Somes Mare

contributes with approx. 64%. The 1/100 years return period flood analysis on Somes Mare and

Somes Mic shows that the floods on the Somes Mare are much more important. A 100 years flood

that occurred in the 1970 was the most significant flood in the Dej area. The flood peak in the

Somes Mare was about 2000 m3/s. Snowmelt highly influences the discharge in the Somes Mare

and the combination of snowmelt and rainfall causes the most devastating floods. Somes Mare has

one small reservoir on the upstream Bistrita tributary, which has very small influence on mitigating

floods (see fig. 1). On the other hand, Somes Mic experienced no major floods after the

construction of Tarnita (1974) and Fantanele (1978) reservoirs. Lately, Somes Mare experienced

many occurrences of flash floods. Flooding in the year 2009 was one of the most devastating. The

situation in the Somes Mare catchment demonstrates the need for further studies in order to build

and implement better flood risk management strategies.

3. Solution approach

In order to address the challenges in flood information dissemination and participation an

innovative web-based flood information system (FIS) has been developed for Somes Mare

following the approach presented in this section. The following sub-sections presents the

hydrological model as a supporting tool, the FIS conceptual framework, system design and the

technologies used for its development.

3.1 Modeling approach

Flood models are most often used as a supporting tool for FRM. In this case study a HEC-HMS

rainfall-runoff model was set-up as a supporting tool for the FIS. HEC-HMS is a hydrological

modelling systems developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The Somes Mare catchment was divided in 24 sub-basins. A discharge varying in time was

introduced as an input coming from the reservoir at Bistrita (see fig. 1). The model made use of the

26 rainfall stations, 23 temperature stations and 19 discharge stations in the catchment; 3 of the

discharge stations are along the main river. Gage weights provided by expert hydrologists from the

Somes Tisza Water Branch of Romanian Waters (the flood management authority) were used to

distribute precipitation over the sub-basins. Monthly evaporation was used in the model. Simple

canopy, simple surface, Soil Moisture Accounting (SMA) loss method, SCS unit hydrograph for

the transform method and linear reservoir for the base flow method were used for all sub-basin.

The lag routing method was used for routing along the river reaches. Since snowmelt highly

influences the discharge on Somes Mare, the Temperature Index snowmelt method was introduced

in the model. Figure 2 shows the schematisation of the Somes Mare basin model.

Fig. 2. Somes Mare basin model schematisation

The calibrated Somes mare HEC-HMS model is intended to be used in future flood

management activities including flood forecasting and warning. Its current results in terms of

reproducing historical discharges in Somes Mare are included in the FIS.

3.2 Web-based FIS conceptual framework and design

Considering the users' needs and requirements the FIS was conceptualised to be simple yet

informative. The web-based FIS conceptual framework (shown in fig. 3) has three main

components: (1) FRM awareness, (2) Access to flood information and (3) Citizens participation.

FRM awareness

Flood information

Participation

•Study area•Flood problems•Flood directives•Current flood management•stakeholders

•Recorded historical flooding•Observed data•Model results (time series and flood maps)•Flood thresholds•Access and download data

•Discuss flood related issues•Share information•Timely report of local flooding

FIS components

Fig. 3. Web-based FIS conceptual framework

Most likely the citizens and stakeholders have little knowledge on the catchments' FRM. The

'FRM awareness' component is introduced to equip them with the necessary background

knowledge on FRM legislation, current practices and major stakeholders. This component also

provides information on the objective of the FIS platform, the characteristics of the study area and

general information on flooding problems in the catchment.

The 'flood information' component is intended to raise the citizens' and stakeholders awareness

on local flooding. Historical floods, observed data and model results (time series and flood maps)

are presented. Furthermore, with the use of discharge thresholds it will provide information if an

event is high enough to cause flooding.

Since citizens' and stakeholders have a better understanding and knowledge about their local

environment their contribution will enhance flood risk management. The citizens' participation

component provides the citizens and stakeholders with opportunities to discuss flood related issues,

share information and timely report on local flooding.

Based on this framework the web-based FIS was designed to be simple, informative,

interactive, customizable and a flexible application. Map based applications were extensively used

for publishing geospatial data and accessing information. Furthermore, web infrastructure services

and data standards were used. Figure 4 presents the generic conceptual technical design.

FIS

Data ManagementApplications

Hydrologic model

ManagementApplications

Citizens Oriented

Applications

Web infrastructure

Data Management

Services

Hydrologic Model

Services

Case –specific Data Visualisation

Services

Data

Spatial and Time- series

data

Computing element

HydrologicalOutput Data

Citizens / decision makers / authorities / specialist/ modellers

Users

Fig. 4. Web-based FIS generic conceptual design

3.3 Technologies

The web-based FIS made use of General Public License (GPL) and latest web development

technologies. The standard technologies used for web development are the HTML, CSS, Javascript

and Ajax for the client side, and, for the server side the Apache and Tomcat server, PHP scripts,

MySQL and PostGIS-PostgreSQL RDBMS were used. Pre-built GPL web applications were also

used for map-based and graphical visualisation. Such pre-built GPL web applications are the

Openlayer (publish and manipulate geospatial data), Bing Maps by Microsoft and OpenStreet

Maps (base maps) and Google Visualisation (time series visualisation).

Since current trends in archiving, sharing, accessing and managing spatial data are geared

towards the use of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), the web-based FIS for the Somes Mare case

study implements' the latest SDI technology (GeoServer and GeoNetwork). SDI's are designed for

interoperability, allowing publishing of data from any spatial data source using open standards.

Recently, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) accepted the WaterML 2.0 schema as an

encoding standard for publishing time series of hydrological observation data. The FIS implements

the WaterML 2.0 application schema using the GeoServer web services. This was achieved

following the framework and methods that were developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and

Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) 2 from Australia. Figure 5 presents the workflow of the

use of web-based technologies.

SDI

GeoNetworkGeoServer GeoServer-WaterML

FIS Applications

Explore metadata

Openlayers(Spatial data)

basin, DEM, flood map, monitoring stations…..

Google Visual(Time series data)

precipitation, discharge, temperature, model results

DownloadTime series

data

Fig. 5. Workflow of the use of web-based technologies

4. Somes Mare FIS demonstrator

In this section we present a summary of the results from the FIS demonstrator application. Full

access to the platform is provided in the following web link:

http://hikm.ihe.nl/envirogrids/platform/somes/

The Somes Mare FIS platform was named Somes Mare flood portal for citizens. Following the

framework and conceptual design, the Somes Mare FIS was structured into four main sections as

follows: (1) Introduction, (2) Somes Mare flood management, (3) Flood information system and

(4) Data access.

The Introduction explains the objective and the use of this platform. The section Somes Mare

flood management (shown in fig. 6) provides information of the study area, its' flooding problems,

flood directives, current FRM plan and the major stakeholders. This section made use of an

2 https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/ASRDC/DeployBoMObservationalDataAsSF1

interactive map to present information on the study area and its' monitoring system.

Fig. 6. Somes Mare flood management section

The section Flood information system has two main elements. These elements are the flood

information explorer and citizens/stakeholder feedback (shown in fig. 7).

Fig. 7. Access to flood information explorer and feedback

The flood information explorer (shown in fig. 8) is intended to raises citizens' awareness about

floods in different sections of the river. Historical floods with their description, cause and impacts

are presented to guide citizens in exploring the historical data. Using an interactive map and chart

interface, users can access monitoring station's time series of observed discharge, precipitation and

temperature. With an aide of discharge thresholds, this provides users' visualisation if an event is

high enough to cause flooding. Flood models are most often used as a supporting tool for long term

FRM or for flood forecasting. To demonstrate the importance of models' for FRM model results of

discharge time series (provided by the Somes Mare HEC-HMS model) and flood maps of 1/20 and

1/100 years return are presented. The flood maps were generated separately and provided by

Romanian Water Authority. This information will enable citizens and stakeholders to know the

areas exposed to flood risk under these scenarios.

Fig. 8. Flood information explorer

The element Citizens/stakeholders feedback (fig. 9) enables citizens and stakeholders to share

information, or provide timely reports on local flooding. With the use of a forum they can discuss

flood related issues with their community or even experts.

Fig. 9. Citizens/stakeholders feedback

The last section named Data Access provides access to hydro-meteorological (fig. 10a) and

spatial data (fig. 10b). Hydro-meteorological data is provided in WaterML 2.0 format. Access to

spatial data is provided via the Web Mapping Service (WMS) stadard. Spatial data can also be

downloaded in Keyhole Mark-up Language (KML) or Geography Markup Language (GML)

format. These data were made available for use by experts, flood management authorities, or

citizens' and stakeholders who have knowledge in using them.

10a

10b

Fig. 10. Data access section

5. Conclusions

The Somes Mare FIS is still to be thoroughly tested with selected citizens and stakeholders. In

its current development it has been tested for its functionalities in full collaboration with the local

flood management authority - the Somes Tisza Water Branch of Romanian Waters. Before actual

tests with selected citizens and stakeholders the whole FIS will be translated in Romanian

language, which is an ongoing activity. It is expected that it will become a valuable system for

awareness raising and citizens empowerment in FRM in the Somes Mare area. The overall

advantages of using such system are in reduced costs and increased efficiency of participatory

FRM, while facilitating the sharing of common interests and objectives among citizens and

different stakeholders.

The Somes Mare FIS also demonstrated that it is possible to develop such system by using

open standards and GPL technologies. The next development stage for the Somes Mare FIS is to

incorporate smart phone applications that will enable citizens' to send instant feedback with photos

on flooding. In the future it is envisaged that the FIS will also incorporate a flood forecasting

component.

Aknowledgements

This was developed within a research project entitled enviroGRIDS at the Black Sea Catchment,

funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union (EU). The Romanian Water

Authority, Somes-Tisa Water Branch provided all the data.

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