But read on to the end to find out what US government agency is doing the research. Your tax dollars at work.
Caption: Residents flee the rising floodwaters in Pakistan. Credit: Cornell University
A fact sheet on DSS-WISE
The catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, which began with the annual monsoons towards the end of July 2010, has affected nearly 62,000 square miles — or one fourth of the entire surface of the USA and Alaska. Six million are homeless. Eight million children are at risk of disease. More than 1,600 are dead already. Flood waters have washed away entire towns, thousands of miles of roads and railways, and damaged the infrastructure of a large portion of the country. Thousands of health facilities are destroyed and rising waters have inundated crop-producing areas, threatening a food crisis. The Pakistani government now struggles to rescue and provide aid to millions – while still fighting with militant Islamist forces in many of the hardest-hit regions.
To help Pakistani authorities cope, a new Dept of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate computer model is being used by hydraulic engineers at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) – Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) and forwarded to their counterparts in Pakistan. Under S&T’s Infrastructure and Geophysical Division the new computer model simulates the flooding, estimates the total drawdown of the floodwaters, and predicts how long it will take the waters to recede. DSS-WISE (Decision Support System – Water Infrastructure Security) incorporates and integrates thousands of data points – from historical, geographical, economical, and satellite info – and paints a current picture and prediction scenario to help with Pakistan’s disaster efforts.
The flooding scenarios are set up with a GIS (geographic information system)-based user-friendly pre-processor. DSS-WISE provides two-dimensional accurate predictive maps of flood arrival times, flood depths and velocities for the specified scenarios. The results provided by the numerical model (CCHE2D-FLOOD) can be directly imported onto a GIS environment to be displayed as maps and overlaid on various types of satellite imagery and background maps.
Flood simulations carried out by ERDC-CHL cover very large areas and the simulation times are relatively long (more than a month). The simulations are aimed not only for the propagation of the flood during the rising period but also for predicting the time required for the flood waters to recede. That is where the extremely robust algorithms implemented in DSS-WISE, which take into account wetting and drying, prove their worth.
The model was developed for S&T by researchers at the National Center for Computational Hydroscience and Engineering (NCCHE) at The University of Mississippi (UM). The model is the product of a research project of the Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI), a program funded by the DHS S&T. S&T’s Mike Matthews is the program manager. The feedback given to S&T by the ERDC-CHL personnel while using the DSS-WISE software is extremely valuable to the NCCHE-UM researchers (http://www.ncche.olemiss.edu/) who are preparing for the next phase of model development through sponsorship from SERRI (http://www.serri.org).
Pakistan’s flood disaster has given a demanding workout to the DSS-WISE software,” says Matthews, ” but, it has proven it can provide accurate and timely predictions even under very challenging modeling requirements.”
The Program Manager for DSS-WISE is DHS S&T’s Mike Matthews: ‘Mike.Matthews@dhs.gov‘
Any media inquiries should be directed to:
John Verrico: john.verrico@dhs.gov 202 254 2385
US Department of Homeland Security – Science and Technology
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“The catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, which began with the annual monsoons towards the end of July 2010, has affected nearly 62,000 square miles — or one fourth of the entire surface of the USA and Alaska.”
If that’s a fact sheet i don’t want to see the errata sheet. But let’s look up the numbers in the CIA world fact book:
Geography ::Pakistan
Area:
total: 796,095 sq km
country comparison to the world: 36
land: 770,875 sq km
water: 25,220 sq km
Area – comparative:
slightly less than twice the size of California
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html
62,000 sq mi is not one fourth of the surface of the United States.
I guess they want to figure out if the Pakistani floods displaced any terrorists?
The rapidity
Of sex change operation;
Nino to Nina.
======
How can 62,000 sq. mi. equal 1/4 of 3,790,000 sq. mi. (The approx. area of the US.)? I hope the modelers’ math is better than the press release writer’s.
Surface area of the USA 3,717,813 miles**2
Well, 62,000 sq.m. is a lot of area, but just around 1.5 per cent of the area of the United States, not one fourth as stated in the text.
computer model is being used by hydraulic engineers at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)
Is that the same Corps of Engineers that did such a great job in New Orleans?
Phew that’s a relief… now I can ignore the weather forecast, put away my contour map and forget that flood plains have a nasty habit of flooding when the monsoons arrive… Thanks Be to another computer model….
From the article: “The catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, which began with the annual monsoons towards the end of July 2010, has affected nearly 62,000 square miles — or one fourth of the entire surface of the USA and Alaska.”
The land area of the USA is 3.7 million square miles. 62,000 sq miles of flooding is NOT one fourth of the entire surface of the USA (which includes our 49th state, Alaska). It is less than 2% of the land area of the US. This report exaggerates by more than a factor of 10.
Are we sure that 62000square miles is 25% of the are of the US? Wiki might have a different view.
“…62,000 square miles — or one fourth of the entire surface of the USA and Alaska.”
Looks like the US have shrunk considerably…
They must have missed a few geography lessons.
62000 Square Miles is a quarter the size of the USA, including Alaska? If I remember my 5th Grade Geography correctly, 62000 Square Miles would be a little more than a 10th of Alaska alone. I wonder if they got those numbers from the IPCC.
“has affected nearly 62,000 square miles — or one fourth of the entire surface of the USA and Alaska”
I didn’t know the USA had shrunk so much. Last I checked is was still about 3.8 million sq miles. NOT 240,000. That is way beyond a typo….
You have got to be kidding me.
My tax dollars? Modeling floods in Pakistan?
Are there no problems in the United States?
Are there no Red River floods to worry about?
Are there no floods in the southeast to worry about?
This is the same Department which cannot come to a decision about deporting the recently revealed illegal immigrant nanny of Meg Whitman.
Are illegal immigrants legal?
Or are they illegal?
In order to avoid the questions, spend your time (and our tax dollars) modeling floods in Pakistan.
Where do I go to object?
“nearly 62,000 square miles — or one fourth of the entire surface of the USA and Alaska. ”
Either that is a misprint, the USA is a lot smaller than I have been led to believe, or, somebodys’ Abacus is missing a few beads.
A computer program is on it’s way, a great relief to all the suffering.
Shades of Mother Theresa
I am genuinely concerned about the effect of flooding in
¨… Pakistan, which began with the ANNUAL monsoons towards the end of July 2010, has affected nearly 62,000 square miles
— or – EQUAL TO – one fourth of the entire surface of the USA and Alaska.
¿¨…AND ALASKA.¨? Who studies geography?
Six million are homeless.
Eight million children – AND EVERY LIVING THING – are at risk of disease.
A great press release. ¿Was this information and assistance available before June? ¿Is there any other part of the Earth which could similarly benefit?
Just one word describes the essence of the proclamations made by the U.S. Government agency responsible for that line of ~complete~ BS: HYPE.
And then they wonder why we constantly berate, deride, and denigrate them …
The models being used for this were developed for US flooding disasters after Katrina and are used for problems here. These models were already available and being used over a year ago.
I’m not sure why the bit about our tax dollars are work is so controversial. Using models already developed to help out an ally (however reliable or not) seems like a good use of our resources, not a bad use.
Where to start. Math? Geography?
That’s the limit.
We have computer modelers who are not able to count.
“USA AND Alaska”
Maybe their textbooks are out of date.
Someone must have used the “Nature trick” to hide 98% of the US surface area. It seems a bit much to have to create a model of how a flooded river basin is going to empty-down. A slide rule sufficed for the 1950 Red River (of the north) flood and the predictions were pretty accurate.
Poor old Hawaii, left out, again.
Of what possible value is being able to predict flooding catastrophe when Pakistan has no intention of proactively mitigating flood damage?
I wonder how many brand-new shiny nuclear warheads Pakistan has these days? How many miles of flood levy could have been built for the cost of each of those warheads? Why is Pakistan building nuclear warheads instead of flood levies?
Because Pakistan is just another corrupt, failed nation of disparate people ( the tribes suffering the flooding are not the ruling tribe in Pakistan).
Pakistani officials have recently decided to stop a NATO convoy bringing supplies to Afghanistan and preventing it from crossing the border.
When a convoy is stopped, it is a sitting duck.
Since then, much of the convoy has been destroyed by Pakistani terrorists, with many deaths.
Why is the US spending any money or effort aiding Pakistan with their flood troubles when that country won’t really utilize it anyway?
Pakistan is NOT our ally. The US is really screwing the pooch over there.