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The TAMIR project (project ID: 874435) was a European Commission Civil Protection Preparedness project that ran from February 2020 to September 2022, it aimed to develop forecast products which could inform about the potential impacts resulting from flash flood hazards. Despite recent progress in seamless probabilistic multi-source hazard forecasting induced by heavy rainfall making it possible to produce predications from the nowcast to short-medium ranges (i.e. from several minute out to 5 days), Civil Protection agencies still face multiple challenges hampering their decisions. The TAMIR project aimed to help address the three main challenges facing Civil Protection agencies:
- High false alarm rates
- Absence of multi-hazard forecasts (e.g. heavy rainfall, flood, lightning) and their simultaneous risk assessment
- Difficulty translating hazard forecasts into impact-based decisions
The project was led by FMI (Finnish Meteorological Institute) and involved partners from UPC (Technical University of Catalonia), ECMWF and KYMPE (Kymenlaakso rescue). The project was a continuation of previous European Commission funded projects: HAREN, EDHIT, ERICHA and SMUFF.
The TAMIR project developed flash flood forecast products by focussing on the following:
- Probabilistic forecast products which reflect information from ensemble forecasts
- Translating flash flood hazard information into impacts
Probabilistic forecast information was obtained by blending information from 1) ensemble nowcasts of precipitation obtained from the pan-European OPERA rdar network, 2) ensemble precipitation forecasts from the ECMWF medium range numerical weather prediction model. The blending is performed each hour when new radar information is available and using the latest available ECMWF forecasts. A flash flood impact product was developed by combining probabilistic forecasts of flood hazard (which were developed in the forerunner SMUFF project) with a static dataset of exposure. The exposure dataset was created from open access pan-European data of population and critical infrastructure. More information about these products is given in pages related to each TAMIR layer.
Throughout the project there was frequent engagement with end users from civil protection and hydrometeorological agencies to discuss the development of the forecast products. This engagement took the form of workshops, the final project workshop was held in Helsinki, Finland in May 2022.
The final products which were developed during the project This was done using innovative science to create several products which have now been integrated into the EFAS platform. This supports pro-active emergency management at different scales, and by integrating them into the EFAS operational platform, allows for effective integration into existing Civil Protection systems.
For more information about the TAMIR project please consult the project website (due to the completion of the project, this website may expire at some point within the year following September 2022)