Project ISRV

Intelligent Heavy Rain-fall-related Flood Risk Warning in the Transport sector

Recent events have highlighted the vulnerability of our cities and their transport infrastructure to heavy rainfall events and flash floods caused thereby. The consequences of heavy rainfall-incued flooding vary greatly depending on topography and urban conditions. For an effective, timely warning and response to extreme weather events, detailed forecasts of both the location and timing of floods and their immediate impacts are therefore of central importance. Up to now, warnings of heavy rainfall have been based primarily on rainfall forecasts or water-based monitoring systems. The ISRV project (Intelligent heavy Rainfall-related Flood Risk Warning in the transport sector), which was launched in November 2021, aims to expand previous precipitation forecasts with punctual flood warnings and to transfer these advanced warnings to navigation devices. Together, the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management, KISTERS AG, 4traffic and SCHWIETERING Ingenieure GmbH are developing an AI-supported and combined real-time forecasting system for heavy rainfall and traffic. This system will enable the immediate effects of a heavy rain event (water levels, flow velocities and affected traffic infrastructure) to be predicted in real time and traffic flows to be diverted in a timely and intelligent manner.

Project partners:

The Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management (IWW) at RWTH Aachen University (project coordinator of ISRV) has been conducting research in the field of flood risk for decades and is increasingly involved in the topic of heavy rainfall, Artificial Intelligence, and the development of hydrodynamic and risk-based early warning systems. KISTERS AG has been offering professional software solutions in the fields of hydrology and meteorology for many years, provides specialized data and forecasting services via its own data centers (KISTERScloud) and operates a high-resolution X-band weather radar at its Aachen site. 4traffic is a Startup with 5 employees, which focuses on a three-component development in the field of hardware and software as well as data analysis of real-time traffic data with new machine learning models. SCHWIETERING Ingenieure GmbH has been planning, consulting and researching in the field of collective traffic management for years and contributes its know-how in the field of traffic management strategies, traffic control systems, effects of cooperative systems and automated driving to the ISRV project.

Funding notice

The ISRV project is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure with around 500,000 euros as part of the Modernization Fund (“mFUND”) funding guideline.

About the mFUND of the BMVI:

As part of the mFUND research initiative, the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has been funding research and development projects related to data-based digital applications for Mobility 4.0 since 2016. In addition to financial support, the mFUND also supports networking between stakeholders from politics, industry and research with various event formats and access to the mCLOUD data portal. For more information, visit www.mfund.de.