Flood warning by ensemble of multiple hydrological models: a case study for Typhoon Morakot

After the catastrophic disaster brought by Typhoon Morakot in 2009, the enhancement of flood warning technology cannot wait in Taiwan. In recent years, ensemble flood warning has exhibited advantages in extending lead time, quantifying uncertainty and raising confidence in issuing warnings. Unlike most ensembles aimed at integrating meteorological variations, this study generates the ensemble through the combination of multiple conceptually different hydrological models in order to avoid possible bias by applying a single model for a flood forecast. Taking Typhoon Morakot as the study case, the townships in Chiayi City/County are selected as the study areas to compare the performance of ensemble warning with that given by individual models. The results indicate that the ensemble warning shows better accuracy than individual models by giving higher overall correctness, revealing the fact that hydrological ensemble is no less important than meteorological ensemble in acquiring better flood warning performance.