FSU BACKGROUND
1. FSU Programme - Introduction
The FSU Programme is a programme of research and development, undertaken by the Office of Public Works (OPW), to provide improved methods of extreme rainfall and flood estimation at both gauged and ungauged locations in the Republic of Ireland. It is a substantial update of a programme of study called the Flood Studies Report (FSR) (NERC, 1975), which was undertaken in the early 1970s by organisations in Ireland and the United Kingdom to provide methodologies for flood estimation in Ireland and the UK. In the UK, the Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) (Institute of Hydrology, 1999) has superseded the FSR as the main method of extreme rainfall and flood estimation.
The Joint Irish National Committee of the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) and of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) passed a recommendation that a similar review and update of the FSR methodologies should be undertaken in Ireland. In September 2004, the Irish Government approved the Report of the Flood Policy Review Group, which included a recommendation for an update of the FSR for Ireland.
The FSU is being made available as a free-to-use web-based rainfall and flood estimation tool. Its use is of practical importance in the areas of flood risk management, flood mapping, and flood relief design work in the Republic of Ireland. It will be used by the OPW, Local Authorities, and Private Sector Practitioners and will be continually applied and referred to by professionals working in the area of flood risk assessment and management in Ireland.
2. FSU Programme - Overview
The FSU Web Portal facilitates the estimation of flood flows, extreme rainfall depths, and other hydrological variables, for thousands of river locations in the Republic of Ireland. These locations have been identified by placing node-points at 500m centres along the entire Irish river network (blueline river network).
The FSU Web Portal allows users to estimate (a) extreme rainfall depths, (b) peak flood-flow rates, and (c) flood-flow hydrographs (time-series of flow), using a series of algorithms and node-specific parameters. There are approximately 134,000 such nodes on the blueline river network, and node-specific parameters for each of these have been pre-calculated (known as “physical catchment descriptors”). While almost 30 physical catchment descriptors have been developed for each node point, the current FSU methodologies use 10 of these.
The FSU Web Portal allows users to use a geospatial/GIS-based search tool to find their location(s) of interest, to view the spatial characteristics of the contributing catchment area, and to view background mapping.
3. Structure of the FSU Research
The research work to develop improved methodologies for rainfall and flood estimation in Ireland was broken up into a series of six themed Work Groups (WGs) and these were further sub-divided into Work Packages (WPs) as shown in Table 1 below.
Work Group 1 - Meteorological Analysis
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WP1.1
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Meteorological Data Preparation
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WP1.2
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Rainfall Depth-Duration-Frequency Analysis
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Work Group 2 - Hydrological Analysis
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WP2.1
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Hydrological Data Preparation
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WP2.2
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Flood Frequency Analysis
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WP2.3
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Determination of the Index Flood (QMED) at Ungauged
Locations
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Work Group 3 - Flood Hydrograph Analysis
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WP3.1
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Hydrograph Width Analysis
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WP3.2
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Flood Event Analysis
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WP3.3
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Floodplain Attenuation Analysis
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WP3.4
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FSU Guidance on Inputs to River Basin Modelling
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WP3.5
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Interactive Bridge Invoking the Design Event Method
(IBIDEM)
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Work Group 4 - Urban Catchment Flood Analysis
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WP4.1
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Scoping Study of Urban Flood Issues
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WP4.2
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Flood Estimation for Urbanised and Small Catchments
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WP4.3
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Effects of Urbanisation at Catchment Scale
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Work Group 5 - Development of Information Systems
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WP5.1
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Scoping Study of Information Systems
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WP5.2
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Base Flow Index from Soils Data (BFIsoil) –
Physical Catchment Descriptor
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WP5.3
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Preparation of Physical Catchment Descriptors
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WP5.4
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FLATWET
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Work Group 6 - Dissemination & Publication of FSU Products
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WP6.1
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Alpha Testing of the FSU methodologies
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WP6.2
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Development of a Web-based Applications Portal
for the FSU
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WP6.3
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Data Cleansing
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WP6.4
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Technical Documentation
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WP6.5
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Beta Testing by Practitioners
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Table 1. Constituent Work Groups and Work Packages within the FSU Research and Development Programme
The full list of Research Reports are available for download from the FSU Web Portal Documents Page.
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