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Prof. Ezio Todini
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Title: Practice and technical application of hydrological monitoring and forecasting & early warning in China
Authors: Zhiyu Liu 1,2; Yiwen Zhang
Affiliation: 1 Hydrology Montior and Forecast Center, Ministry of Water Resources of China, Beijing 100053; [email protected] ; [email protected] 2 Hohai University, Nanjing 210098; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: (+86-10-63204513)
Abstract: China is one of the countries in the world with frequent and serious flood and drought disasters. Since 1949, China has carried out large-scale construction of water conservancy projects and continuous harnessing of major rivers such as the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and other large rivers. Starting in the 1980s, especially after the 1998 Yangtze River Great Flood, China has continued to invest in and accelerate the construction of flood control and drought relief projects, while strengthened non-engineering measures such as hydrologogical monitoring, forecasting and early warning. To date, China has built an overall and powerful hydrologic monitoring system supported by hydrologic stations network, shaping a hydrological forecasting operational system consisting of a hierarchy of hydrologic management, flood forecast, joint consultation, and results-sharing. As the result, hydrological early warning can cover five adminstrative levels ranging from the central government to river basin water resources commission, provincial hydrological department, regional hydrological information center and county-level hydrological unit. The more complete and powerful hydrological monitoring and forecasting early warning system produces significant benefits in disaster prevention and mitigation, contributing to the decision-making for national flood and drought control purposes. This paper provides a brief on the general situation of flood disasters in China and new ideas in disaster prevention and reduction, reviews and summarizes the main measures, technical methods and latest progresses in hydrological monitoring and forecasting & early warning, and introduces exemplary cases of critical hydrological forecasting that successfully helped flood control and disaster reduction decision-making such as flood dispatch, emergency disposal, rescue and rescue in historical major floods. Finally, this paper probes into existing issues and challenges in flood prediction and forecasting nowadays, and puts forward several key tasks as a mark for future development direction and sectors to be strengthened