Hydrology Section

Peter Newport CEng, Hydrometric

Established in 2020, the functions of the Hydrology Section can be broadly divided into four areas of flood risk management expertise:

Flood forecasting

The Hydrology Section is collaborating with Met Éireann to establish the first Irish National Flood Forecasting service. It will be responsible for oversight of the service and providing guidance for standards and performance. By the end of 2021 it is planned that the service will be in a position to provide high level national flood forecasts in pre-operational mode.

Extreme Flood Estimation

In 2020, the Hydrology Section commenced work on the Flood Estimation Methodologies for Ireland (FEMI) Programme. This programme will deliver the next generation of flood estimation methodologies that will be used to estimate extreme flood magnitudes to assist in the design of infrastructure in or near rivers, in particular flood relief schemes and bridge design levels.

Modelling the effects of climate change on flood flows in Ireland

The Hydrology Section is building hydrological computer models for all main Irish rivers. Once built, it will be possible to incorporate future climate scenarios to these models to estimate how the flood behaviour of Irish rivers will have changed by the end of the century. It will also be possible to model future changes due to the impacts of urbanisation, afforestation, and land use change.

Modelled flows using the GR4J Hydrological model

Data Analytics applied to hydrological data (e.g. satellite imagery, historic data)

The Hydrology section will lead the progression of use of big data analysis for hydrology. This will include applying data analytics to the use of remote sensing (data from satellite observations), crowdsourcing of flood data from social media and citizen science, reconstruction of historical flow records from rainfall records (data rescue).