Using OpenMI and a Model MAP to Integrate WaterML2 and NetCDF Data Sources into Flood Modeling of Genoa, Italy

Abstract

Extreme hydrometeorological events such as flash floods have caused considerable loss of life and damage to infrastructure over recent years. Flood events in the Mediterranean region between 1990 and 2006 caused over 4,500 fatalities and cost over €29 billion in damage, with Italy one of the worst affected countries. The Distributed Computing Infrastructure for Hydro-Meteorology (DRIHM) project is a European initiative aiming at providing an open, fully integrated eScience environment for predicting, managing, and mitigating the risks related to such extreme weather phenomena. Incorporating both modeled and observational data sources, it enables seamless access to a set of computing resources with the objective of providing a collection of services for performing experiments with numerical models in meteorology, hydrology, and hydraulics. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how this flexible modeling architecture has been constructed using a set of standards including the NetCDF and WaterML2 file formats, in-memory coupling with OpenMI, controlled vocabularies such as CF Standard Names, ISO19139 metadata, and a Model MAP (Metadata, Adaptors, Portability) gateway concept for preparing numerical models for standardized use. Hydraulic results, including the impact to buildings and hazards to people, are given for the use cases of the severe and fatal flash floods, which occurred in Genoa, Italy in November 2011 and October 2014.(KEY TERMS: computational methods; flooding; OpenMI; WaterML2; data management.)

Featured Collection Introduction: Open Water Data Initiative

“…The final articles present examples of data tools and models which demonstrate value from application of the OWDI concepts, with four of the five papers addressing some aspect of flood modeling or forecasting. The first example (Harpham et al ., ) demonstrates how a flexible modelling architecture that integrates models with observational data has been constructed, using a set of standards and a Model MAP (Metadata, Adaptors, Portability) gateway concept to prepare numerical models for use in flood forecasting. Hydraulic results, including impact to buildings and hazards to people, are given for the use cases of severe and fatal flash floods which occurred in Genoa, Italy in 2011 and 2014.…”

Metamodel-assisted analysis of an integrated model composition: An example using linked surface water – groundwater models

“…OpenMI (Harpham et al, 2016) or CSDMS (Peckham et al, 2013)  Described properlye.g. semantics / ontologies, so that different disciplines can recognise the same variable even if its described differently (Nativi et al, 2013)  Run as quickly as possibledoes it need to run in the cloud (High Performance Computing), parallelisation employed or be made available via Web Services (Castronova et al, 2013)?…”