If GloFAS is used for flood early warning, a good way to start working is to analyse:

  1. the Rapid impact assessment layer in the region of interest. In case of regions highlighted in yellow, amber or red, it is worth studying the hydrological situation more in detail. Red colour indicates a more severe situation in terms of more people being affected, earlier start of the event or both and can imply to take actions. 
  2. the Reporting point layer, which provides more information on the forecasted event in the pop-up window and which is specific for each reporting point (click on the point of interest to open the pop-up window). The forecasted discharge hydrographs can be analysed with respect to onset and severity of the event (return period) as well as uncertainty, i.e. the spread of the boxplots summarising the probabilistic forecast. 
  3. the Flood Summary layers that can be used to study the affected river sections, which are forecasted to have high discharge levels. The flood summary layers are available for different lead times, 1-3 days, 4-10, 11-30 and for the whole forecast period, i.e. 1-30 days, which is directly related to the reporting point that also visualises the likelihood of a flood within the 30-day forecast window. The user has to choose which lead times are most relevant. 
  4. the GloFAS lakes and reservoir layer that visualises the location of major lakes and reservoirs, which can have a significant impact on the actual discharge values, i.e. a damping effect in many cases. The hydrological model within GloFAS (LISFLOOD-OS) does simulate major lakes and reservoirs visible in the layer. In addition, one can add the Reservoir impact layer from the Static tab that shows how much a certain river section is affected by reservoir effects. 
  5. the Hydrological model performance layer to determine the general goodness of fit of the hydrological model for the region of interest. If there are no calibration points available in a specific area, this area has not been calibrated. 

GloFAS can also be used to assist in long-term planning of water resources. In this case, the GloFAS seasonal forecast products can be used to study the situation in the area of interest more in detail. 

For the monitoring of ongoing events, the comprehensive layers of the Monitoring menu can be used. 

Each layer has a legend that can be accessed using the info-button, see description in section 3.2.1 GloFAS functionalities explained.