DRIHM(2US): an e-Science environment for hydro-meteorological research on high impact weather events

From 1970 to 2012, about 9000 high impact weather events were reported globally causing the loss of 1.94 million lives and damage of US$ 2.4 trillion (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, UNISDR report 2014). The scientific community is called to action to improve the predictive ability of such events and communicate forecasts and associated risks both to affected populations and to those making decisions. At the heart of this challenge lies the ability to have easy access to hydrometeorological data and models, and to facilitate the necessary collaboration between meteorologists, hydrologists, and computer science experts to achieve accelerated scientific advances. Two EU funded projects, DRIHM and DRIHM2US, sought to help address this challenge by developing a prototype e-Science environment providing advanced end-to-end services (models, datasets and post-processing tools), with the aim of paving the way to a step change in how scientists can approach studying these events, with a special focus on flood events in complex topography areas. This paper describes the motivation and philosophy behind this prototype e-Science environment together with certain key components, focusing on hydro-meteorological aspects, which are then illustrated through actionable research for a critical flash flood event, which occurred in October 2014 in Liguria, Italy.