Upgradi̇ng of the Hydrological Forecasting System in Poland

After the disastrous flood event of 1997 in Poland, the main concern was to upgrade and modernize the existing System of Hydrological Forecasting. The new System of Hydrology (SH) that had to be developed for entire Poland was implemented as an important component of the Emergency Flood Recovery Project, financed by the World Bank. A detailed design was worked out in 2000 and a new SH was elaborated and implemented in close cooperation with the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW), between 2001 and 2005. The new System of Hydrology was developed as an entirely new hydrologic information system, encompassing a modeling platform, integrating different kind of models, including the existing hydrological models used in the forecasting service before implementation of the SH. The modernized SH is an open forecasting system, allowing integration of other methods also in the future, which uses the information from the different meteorological forecasting services available at the Institute as a very likely to occur ensemble forecasting.