Dam-break flood emergency management system

Natural or induced floods are of increasing concern to water managers and civil protection services for three main reasons. Firstly, a continuous and ‘unconscious’ increase of social pressure in the flooding valleys amplifies flood vulnerabilities and consequently natural or induced flood risk. Secondly, the alarming forecasts of the impact of potential climate changes on water resources, in spite of the high uncertainty associated with these forecasts, points to larger flood hazards. Thirdly, dam-break induced accidents may occur more frequently due to infrastructure ageing. Emergency Planning is a non-structural measure to minimise flood impacts playing an important role in crisis management. In fact, if a disaster cannot be avoided, individual and social structure preparedness may be of great help in risk reduction. An Internet-based system that supports flood emergency management is presented in this article. This application is part of a more complete system, developed with the goal of endowing the Portuguese water authorities, dam owners and the civil protection system, with adequate tools to store and easily retrieve information on dams and their downstream valleys, to model the flood wave induced by a dam break and, eventually, to manage the response to flood-induced catastrophes.