Developing and maintaining a cloud-based Flood Early Warning System for Ireland

Tractebel company International Marine and Dredging Consultants (IMDC) and partner Nelen & Schuurmans are configuring a flood forecasting platform in the Delft Flood Early Warning System (FEWS) integrator system, using detailed hydrological models for all catchments in Ireland.  

The application will be hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, where it will be maintained and updated for up to seven years. Client Met Éireann (Irish Meteorological Service) can access the platform from anywhere, using virtual desktops and outputs that will be exported to its new data portal. The project began in July 2021 and will run through 2024 and potentially up to 2028.  

Met Eireann entrusted us with this project following a previous mandate to determine the most optimal hydrological model and integrator system. Those results were then used by the client to issue the tender for the current project, to which we replied with a detailed, technical proposal.  

In this project, we will not only configure the integrator system, which is the “classic” content of such projects, but we will also host the system in the Microsoft Azure cloud and maintain it for seven years. This is really new for this type of platform, which is usually hosted on-premise in the clients’ data centres. 

Map view of rivers and lakes: rainfall gauges		Rainfall forecasted by HARMONIE numerical weather model
Data viewer by town / city

“Full cloud hosting of the FEWS integrator platform in the cloud is a novel solution. Accessibility to real-time data anytime, from anywhere will improve flood forecasting across Ireland, with the aim to mitigate damage to homes, infrastructure, dams and reservoirs.”  Steven Smets, Project Manager