¶ GFM data on GloFAS
The Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) is the global flood service of the European Commission Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), an operational system monitoring and forecasting floods across the world.
GFM's products are made available within the GloFAS Map Viewer. To be allowed to the Map Viewer, users are requested to register to the service by clicking on the following graphic:
Once registered, the MapViewer can be accessed by typing the account details in the form above.
Users are also offered the chance to sign in to the MapViewer by means of their Google accounts:
¶ Monitoring the Health Status of the GFM Product
Information about the overall health state of the GFM service is presented to the user within GloFAS Map Viewer. An “alert sign” in the top menu, positioned on the right, next to the user profile, indicates the health state of the service. The alert sign is colour coded as follows:
- “Green”: Service Up And Running
- “Amber”: Service Degraded
- “Red”: Service Not Available
Detailed information about the health state of the various components of the service can be retrieved by clicking on the “alert sign”. This will open a pop-up window onto the map viewer presenting the latest registered alert notifications as shown below. The different alert notifications are organised by Group providing details about the current Status, a Message describing the alert notification, and a Date indicating when the alert was raised. The column Group in the window refers to the individual components of the service. Four service components/groups are defined which will be outlined hereafter.
The group Sentinel1 Datastream comprises alerts in respect to any required Sentinel-1 data used to deduce the various layers provided by the service. One major alert event in this group is the Copernicus Services Data Hub acting as reference for all the Sentinel-1 input data used in the service. Downtimes of the Copernicus Services Data Hub as well as issues in receiving the required data will be notified within this group. Furthermore, observed issues in respect to the performed pre-processing of Sentinel-1 data will be alerted, because the pre-processed data is the main input data stream to deduce flood information.
Alert notifications in respect to the production of the individual GFM layers is provided within the group GFM production. Any observed issues within the actual production system of GFM are forwarded within this group. Anomalies detected in the processing workflow of the flood layers as well as non-availabilities of components of the production system are covered in this notification group as well as the monitoring of the interface towards to the GFM dissemination system.
The GFM dissemination system is responsible to provide access to produced GFM layers. End user entry points the GFM layers are provided by a WMS-T server as well as a dedicated Web Application (portal). Degradations or the unavailability of those will be reported within this group.
Finally, the API Health group depicts alerts in respect to the developed RESTful APIs. The RESTful APIs are a backend system of high importance connecting the GFM production and dissemination system. In addition, the APIs allow for machine-to-machine communication to enable push notifications via Twitter.
¶ How to browse GFM products in GloFAS Map Viewer
Once logged in, GFM's products are listed in the top bar under the “Monitoring” menu, as shown below:
Each layer can be visualized by moving the toggle to the “on” position: once done the selected layer will be added to the dynamic layer list on the left side on the screen
In the following example, the Observed Flood Extent layer is switched on: GloFAS Map Viewer will then display the Sentinel-1 tiles for which GFM has detected flood-covered areas.
The dashed edge of each S-1 overpass tile is coloured as a function of the size and the pattern of the detected flooded, as shown in the legend below:
¶ Areas of Interest
GFM-registered users are also offered the possibility to draw their own areas of interest (AOIs). By clicking on “Flood Monitoring”, the system will display a first sub-menu offering the user the possibility of selecting:
- the list of the designed AOIs
- the list of the notification for the AOIs as set in the GFM WebApp
This menu allows the users to visualize the list of the user-defined AOIs
To the right of each AOI's name, the system allows:
- to display the boundaries of the AOI (eye-shaped icon)
- to hide the boundaries of the AOI (barred eye-shaped icon)
- to modify the boundaries of the AOI (pencil&sheet, this function will redirect tehe user to the GFM WebApp)
Above the list of the available AOIs, users are offered the chance to design the AOIs of their choice directly through GloFAS (see figure below):
- blue square: design an AOI
- red rubber: delete the AOI
- green floppy disc: save the AOI
When the latter icon is pressed, the system will display a form users must fill out to save the AOI and display the available GFM's products.
¶ Floods notification
Users have the chance to be notified any time a new GFM's product is available for a specific AOI upon proper configuration of the notification setup through the WebApp.
Once done, flood notifications are displayed on GloFAS as well through the menu shown below.
When users click on a notification, the system will display every the newly available product.
GFM's products can then be downloaded in a bundle (.zip file) in TIFF format by pressing the downward arrow icon as shown below
By pressing GFM DOWNLOAD the user will be redirected to the landing page of the GFM Webportal.