ANFAS: Data Fusion for Flood Analysis and Decision Support

by Simon Lambert

Several ERCIM partners are working together in a new project under the European Information Society Technologies programme. The ANFAS project aims to develop a decision support system for flood prevention and protection, integrating the most advanced techniques in data processing and management.

Large-scale flooding is a serious problem in many parts of the world. In Asia, countries such as China and Bangladesh regularly suffer, while in Europe many countries are at risk. There is danger of loss of life and serious damage to the economies of the areas affected.

For this reason, the ANFAS project has been set up to include partners from both the European Union, other European countries, and China. The partners bring together expertise in soil sciences, remote sensing, sceintific computing, computer vision, internet technology, geographic information systems, knowledge-based systems and other areas. The ERCIM partners are:

• ERCIM itself in the project management role
• FORTH, with expertise in Geographic Information Systems
• SRCIM: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Informatics, one of the links with the end-users and also with expertise in geophysical flow modelling and high-performance computing
• CLRC, bringing expertise in knowledge-based assistance and cooperative capabilities for information systems
• INRIA, with expertise in geophysical flow modelling and high-performance computing.

The project team also includes three other European partners (Matra System & Information, the French geological survey and ore exploration - BRGM, Reading University) and three Chinese institutes (Institute of Automation (IOA), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Institute of Remote Sensing Applications (IRSA), of the Chinese Academy of Sciences).

When there is a risk of flooding, decision makers have to decide what are the most appropriate actions to take: evacuation of the population, reinforcement of dikes, intentional breaking of dikes, etc. The aim of the ANFAS project is to develop a simulation and prevention tool to help decision-makers in taking decisions that will limit flood damage.

The functionality of the ANFAS system will be:

• to perform flood simulation, simulating water flow propagation based on scenarios. The user will be able to interact with the scene that models the real site in order to add/remove dikes or other human constructions
• to assess flood damage. Flood assessment can be done either using the simulation results or using the remote sensed images of a real flood event
• at a prospective level, to analyse floodplain morphology including changes in riverbed and subsurface properties due to repeated floods at a given site.

The output of the system will be:

• visualisation: consisting of two-dimensional maps of the extent of the flood. If simulation is performed, time sequence maps tracing the propagation of the simulated flood will be provided
• direct impact assessment, evaluation of the total affected area
• regional and statistical analyses over the affected area
• simple socio-economic assessment of damage directly caused by flooding.

The final system will be an immensely valuable tool in planning national and regional responses to the threat of flooding, and will be adaptable to other areas.

Links:

Anfas website: http://www.ercim.eu/ANFAS/

Please contact:
Bruno Le Dantec – ERCIM Office
Tel: +33 4 9238 5010
E-mail: bruno.le_dantec@ercim.org