Recommendations to improve the interpretation of global flood forecasts to support international humanitarian operations for tropical cyclones

This paper aims to share the experiences of the authors of using global flood models to support humanitarian decision making in Central America and Mozambique through a Flood Early Warning Pilot. Specific examples from case studies of Hurricane Iota (November 2020) and Cyclone Eloise (January 2021) are drawn on to identify recommendations to provide more robust and actionable impact-based flood forecasts from global models.

The paper concludes that the effective use of global models currently requires understanding of their strengths and weakness in conjunction with access to local data to provide information at a scale that can support local humanitarian action. Long term funding is required to support the development of close research and operational collaborations to improve the linkages between expert knowledge and forecast interpretation. The increasing use of global forecasting systems highlights an urgent need for innovative development of user relevant metrics to assess the skill and value of global models, particularly in ungauged catchments.