Flemish Environment Agency Selects FloodWorks for Critical Flood Forecasting

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Flemish Environment Agency Selects FloodWorks for Critical Flood Forecasting

Innovyze Smart Water Solution to Guard Against Flooding and Issue Early Warnings

Broomfield, Colorado, USA, March 11, 2014 — Innovyze, a leading global innovator of business analytics software and technologies for smart wet infrastructure, today announced that the Flemish Environment Agency (VMM), Belgium, has chosen FloodWorks as part of its flood control and mitigation systems. Flanders is one of the three Belgian regions with its own government, parliament and administration. The Flemish Region is the Dutch-speaking part of the country and has the largest population (58%). Headquartered in Aalst, VMM operates as an agency of the Flemish government for a better environment in Flanders. Its mission is to contribute to the realization of environmental policy objectives by reporting on the state of the environment; preventing, limiting and reversing harmful impacts on water systems and pollution of the atmosphere; and achieving integrated water policy objectives. Because of the increase in hardened surface area in Flanders and the possible consequences of climate change, more frequent and more extreme floods may occur. Moreover, more construction is taking place in the natural flood plains, increasing the potential for damage from flooding. As a powerful and effective flood risk management tool, Floodworks will help VMM forecast river levels in real-time, issue early warnings and minimize the economic impact of flood events. “FloodWorks’ powerful real-time flood forecasting, modeling and advanced early warning capabilities are helping us develop a comprehensive flood risk management strategy that includes effective emergency response and contingency action planning,” said Kris Cauwenberghs, Service Flood Manager, VMM Department of Operational Water. “It is a very effective tool for helping us protect our citizens, historical city centers, businesses and our waterways from potential flooding. All real-time flood forecasts for Flanders can now be accessed and reviewed directly from www.waterinfo.be. The new site includes hundreds of real-time hydrographs for the next 48 hours and next 10 days (including hydraulic ensemble bands) and real-time dynamic flood inundation maps along 4,000 km of watercourses.” FloodWorks is a modular software package providing real-time simulation and forecasting of future hydrological and hydraulic conditions within river basins, stormwater and drainage systems and coastal areas. Designed for operational use in the control room, it links varied live data sources with a wide range of models to provide detailed and accurate forecasts of water levels, flood depths, flows, velocities, water quality parameters and sea states. When configured for use with the integrated 1D/2D simulation engine in Innovyze InfoWorks RS,FloodWorks also provides flood forecasting for river systems, channels and flood plains. The comprehensive modeling solution combines integrated rainfall-runoff, hydraulic, water quality, conveyance, dam breach and logical control modules with real-time hydrological and meteorological time-series data to forecast water levels, flood depths and sea states for hours or days ahead. The product’s operational management user interface, FloodWorks Event Manager, combines ease of use with powerful capabilities for visualizing and reporting forecast results. When an event trigger threshold is reached, the FloodWorks Server issues an alert. This alert and its severity level are clearly shown on the map display in the FloodWorks Event Manager. Alerts can be simultaneously issued by e-mail or SMS to ensure that the latest information is distributed to key personnel as quickly as possible. In addition, FloodWorks Web Publisher andWeb Server components allow server output to be published in Web-compatible formats for instant access on either public or intranet websites.  “The economic and personal costs of flooding are only too real for many people in countries around the world,” said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D., BCEEM, NAE, Hon.D.WRE, Dist.D.NE, F. ASCE, President, COO and Chief Technical Officer of Innovyze. “We are proud that VMM has chosen FloodWorks to play such an important part in its critical work to minimize the impacts of flooding on society, households and businesses.”