david watson river forecast section alberta environment and sustainable resource development

Alberta Rivers AppDiscussion and Demonstration

David Watson

River Forecast SectionAlberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development

River Forecast Team Mandate

– Real-time flow forecasting and support to partners (public, provincial staff, Municipal Emergency Managers, Industry, Provincial Parks, National Parks, Prairie Provinces)

– Near real-time data quality management; enter WSC and Provincial field measurement; assist in prioritized field maintenance of monitoring network

– Daily Natural Flow Forecasting– Water Supply

• To provide Albertans with information related to current and future river or river ice conditions to enable Albertans to make decisions related to water supply, and emergency response planning.

Previous Public Access to Data

Access to “Near-Real-Time” Data• Alberta River Basins Website.

www.environment.alberta.ca/apps/basins/

How Current is the Data?• Alberta River Basins Website.

Data Transmission, Processing, Database Ingestion, Data made available to web server.

• Not uncommon for data displayed on the web to be ~ 2-3 hours old.

Alberta Basins Webpage – Oldman Basin

Previous Public Access to Advisories

Access to Advisories (Pre-2013)• Current and Historicalwww.environment.alberta.ca/forecasting/advisories/index.html

In 2013, the River Forecast Section adopted the Alberta Emergency Alberta warning system, which allowed users to sign up for RSS feeds, and eventually text message alerts.• This system would alert users of ALL advisories

throughout the province, did not allow for users to select the type of advisory they were interested in.

www.emergencyalert.alberta.ca

Access to Forecasters Commentswww.environment.alberta.ca/forecasting/ForecastersComments/index.html

Previous Advisory – PDF Format

Previous Forecaster Comments - PDF

June 2013 – Shift in Public Expectation

Banff Falls

Bow River 2013

Canmore –Cougar Creek 2013 and 2014

Exshaw – Bow River -2013

Carrot Creek

Banff Park 2013

Alberta Rivers App

App Description:Obtain the latest information about Alberta’s rivers, including flood advisories and comments issued by Alberta’s River Forecast Centre.

View all current surface water data for Alberta.

Public Need ServedAccess to Near-Real-Time Data• Data displayed is in higher resolution

15 min intervals, vs. hourly aggregation.• Data is truly Near-Real-Time

Data displayed on the app is only 20 minutes older than what is available to Forecasters in the WISKI database.

Alberta Rivers AppFeatures:• View all monitoring stations on a map

– 398 Rivers/Lake stations– 315 Precipitation stations– 17 Snow Pillow stations

• Tap stations to view current data and whether flows are normal• Receive notifications when new advisories and relative comments are issued• Save your own list of important stations for quick reference

Advisories apply to streams and their tributaries unless otherwise noted.• No significant precipitation is

expected in the next week – although conditions will remain unsettled

• Water levels rises of up to 0.7 m were observed over the weekend

• The maximum precipitation occurred in the James and Clearwater River Basins (50mm)

Questions?Suggestions?