TSR launches new rainfall, flooding model

Tropical Storm Risk, a subsidiary of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, has developed technology for its TSR Storm Tracker that can predict the amount of rainfall and where it will fall within a 60-km area.

The new rainfall forecast capability is intended to help insurers, reinsurers and risk managers. The product will enable users to monitor threatening tropical storms, assess the risk of excessive rainfall and the potential for inland flooding.

“Intense rainfall often causes more damage and loss of life than the high winds of tropical cyclones,” says professor Mark Saunders, TSR lead scientist and head of weather and climate extremes at the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre.

“However, there are few tools that provide warnings of the risk of heavy rainfall from active tropical storms worldwide. The TSR upgrade represents the first inclusion of quantitative and probabilistic rainfall forecasts within a publicly-accessible storm tracker.”

The product’s features include:

* Quantitative rainfall forecasts giving the total rainfall at a given point over leads of one, two, three, four and five days.

* Probabilistic rainfall forecasts giving the likelihood that rainfall at a given location will exceed thresholds of 5 cm (2 inches), 12.5 cm (5 inches) and 20 cm (8 inches) over leads of one, two, three, four and five days.

* Forecasts provided at a spatial resolution of 60 km and interpolated to 10 km.

* Updated forecasts every 12 hours.

* Observed rainfall rates and totals for the last three hours and last seven days. The technology is available for tropical storms worldwide.