09.06.2017: How can a community be enabled to protect against future floods or insurers calculate flood losses? Data sets are needed. These data are now provided by the OASIS community with the OASIS data hub. With the participation of the GFZ section Hydrology the data hub was officially launched last Monday in London.

The new data hub provides data sets on inundation depths for the German part of the Danube river catchment. The data are available free of charge and open access. The hub provides simulations and data of historical, current, and future data sets on inundation depths in centimetres, with a 100 metre resolution for 4150 river kilometres. The OASIS data community is a pioneering global data community with members from science, industry through to communities.

The data are available for insurers, researchers, the industry or policy makers in communities. The hub aims at enabling a transparent exchange of data and thereby to enable especially communities to adapt against future climate change. Kai Schröter from the GFZ section Hydrology: „There are calculations of a 125 Billion US Dollar „protection gap“ that we would like to help closing with our data hub. By knowing about future flood risk, communities are able to protect themselves and to plan mitigation measures against future floods. This protects infrastructures and values.“

The data hub is jointly funded by the European climate protection initiative Climate-KIC and the EU Horizon 2020 „Project Oasis Innovation Hub for Catastrophe and Climate Extremes Risk Assessment“. The GFZ section Hydrology mainly contributes to the project with the OASIS-loss modeling framework that allows for calculating expected losses. (ak)

>>OASIS-loss modeling framework

>>OASIS HUB