End to end flood forecasting: a mathematical tour

Dr Sarah Dance, University of Reading. Part of the applied mathematics seminar series.

This talk will provide a mathematician’s introduction to flood forecasting: from observations of clouds, to numerical weather prediction of rainfall, through river run-off to flood inundation forecasts.  Data assimilation plays a key role at various stages in this process. Data assimilation is a powerful technique for combining forecasts from dynamic models with observations to give an improved forecast, taking account of uncertainty. The talk will include new ideas for uncertainty estimation, new results in numerical linear algebra and optimization and some complex fluid dynamics simulations.

Dr Sarah Dance, University of Reading