Hydrological Forecasts ¶

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Projects
Services and products
Staff

The research group «Hydrological Forecasts» investigates the spatio-temporal distribution and variability of the available natural water resources in mountainous basins and in larger alpine river systems.

A particular focus will be put on the analysis of extreme situations such as floods and persisting droughts. This is achieved by both analysis of previous events (e.g. the flood of August 2005 in Switzerland) and investigations with simulations and statistical evaluation of long term data series.

The group develops models and operational system for flood warning in gauges and ungauged basins. Thereby we try to improve the quality of hydrological forecasts by assimilation of updated observations (e.g. snow cover maps and runoff volumes).

Furthermore distributed hydrological simulations are adopted for estimating possible hydrological impacts of climate change.

In addition WSL updates since more than 40 years a database containing a detailed description of the major damages triggered by hydrological hazards. These records could represent an important source of information for the assessment of hydrology related hazards maps.

The Research Group contributes to studies to optimize the prediction of snow and water resources for hydro-power plants.

Projects ¶

Rheinblick2027 investigates the effects of climate change on the Rhine River discharge based on the latest state-of-the-art.

Bei SmaalFlex Goms handelt es sich um die Fortsetzung einer Studie zu Möglichkeiten eines flexiblen Betriebs von kleinen Laufkraftwerken im Oberwallis.

Climate change exacerbates drought-related extremes, with significant ecological, economic, and human health impacts. MaLeFiX project is developing an interdisciplinary platform that will provide comprehensive four-week forecasts of drought-related extremes – buying stakeholders valuable time to act.

In Switzerland there are hundreds of stations to measure snow depth. In the absence of sufficient snow water equivalent data, the combination of precipitation and snow depth data along with snow modelling and data assimilation methods enable determining biases in existing precipitation products.

Die Forschungsstation Seehornwald Davos wurde in den 80er-Jahren von der WSL initiiert und ist damit eine der ältesten permanent betriebenen Wald-Vegetations-Forschungsstationen in der Schweiz.

Services and products ¶

Since 1972 the WSL has been systematically collecting (based on newspapers) and analysed storm damage. The spatial distribution of the damage from 1972 to 2023 and during some large events can be viewed on an interactive map.

The WSL database records deaths due to naturally triggered natural hazards per year since 1946 to obtain a complete series with all natural hazard processes relevant in Switzerland.

Staff ¶