Detection

Most flood warning systems use near real time measurements of meteorological and river or coastal conditions to guide operational decision making. Depending on the application, this may include information on rainfall, wind speeds, sea state, tidal levels, river levels and other parameters, such as snow cover. Remote sensing techniques such as weather radar and satellite may also be used, together with the outputs from Numerical Weather Prediction models and nowcasting techniques. This chapter provides a general introduction to these and other techniques for monitoring meteorological, river and coastal conditions for flood warning applications. Telemetry systems are also discussed, together with approaches to designing telemetry networks for flood warning applications.