Hydrology Research on New Technologies for Flood Management in Oman

HALBAN A team of hydrologists around Prof. Dr. Ekkehard Holzbecher, Department of Applied Geosciences, German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech) is currently working on research on new technologies that will help to improve the flood management in Oman. The team, including Dr. Ahmed Hadidi, started their research within the project entitled ‘Towards a flood-resilient Omani society: improved tools for flood management’. The project was funded by The Research Council (TRC) between 2015 and 2019. Some of their research results were presented during the 5^th International Symposium on Flash Floods in Wadi Systems (ISFF2020) held in Kyoto (Japan), hosted by Kyoto University, between 25-28 February. The 3^rd symposium of this conference series was organized and hosted by GUtech in 2017. Participating researchers originated from countries facing similar problems with flash floods such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, UAE and Sudan.

During the conference in Kyoto, Prof. Holzbecher gave a presentation ‘On Watershed Delineation for Flood Modelling in Lowlands’. He outlined problems of current practices of flood management and gave an outlook on new technology developments that are capable to resolve some of the issues. “New software tools are not only more powerful, but also more flexible, especially in connection with an advanced sensor network. Within the project ‘LoRaWAN Hydrological Sensor Network’, internally funded by GUtech, a small-scale demonstration of such a network is currently installed,” said Prof Holzbecher.

For a large-scale pilot installation that will help to examine the capabilities of new technologies to prevent damages during flash flood events in Oman and to assist urban planners, the research team is currently looking for further research funding.

Captions:

Prof. Ekkehard Holzbecher is second from left. He was part of the a student award committee, along with the 1^st price winner, Omani student Sabah Al Mahrouqi. She is currently affiliated with Kyoto University.