GANDOLF: a system for generating automated nowcasts of convective precipitation

During the past decade hydrologists have become increasingly aware of the problems of fluvial flood prediction during periods of intense convection, particularly in urbanised catchments whose rainfall-runoff responses tend to be rapid. Existing approaches to deterministic, short-range rainfall prediction are often deficient in their treatment of convective precipitation because they cannot resolve individual convective clouds or effectively model their evolution. In 1994 the UK Met. Office established a joint R&D programme with the Environment Agency (responsible for flood prediction in England and Wales) to explore the benefits of an Object-Oriented conceptual Model (OOM) of convection in the nowcasting of fluvial floods. This involved the development of an automated nowcasting system (GANDOLF) designed to run the OOM during episodes of air mass convection. This paper describes the structure and function of the GANDOLF system and compares the performance of the OOM with that of two other precipitation models routinely used by Thames Region of the Agency.