An Early Warning System for Flood Detection Using Critical Slowing Down

Syed Mohamad Sadiq Syed Musa, Mohd Salmi Md Noorani, Fatimah Abdul Razak, Munira Ismail, Mohd Almie Alias and Saiful Izzuan Hussain
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Syed Mohamad Sadiq Syed Musa: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Mohd Salmi Md Noorani: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Fatimah Abdul Razak: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Munira Ismail: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Mohd Almie Alias: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Saiful Izzuan Hussain: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 17, 1-13

Abstract: The theory of critical slowing down (CSD) suggests an increasing pattern in the time series of CSD indicators near catastrophic events. This theory has been successfully used as a generic indicator of early warning signals in various fields, including climate research. In this paper, we present an application of CSD on water level data with the aim of producing an early warning signal for floods. To achieve this, we inspect the trend of CSD indicators using quantile estimation instead of using the standard method of Kendall’s tau rank correlation, which we found is inconsistent for our data set. For our flood early warning system (FLEWS), quantile estimation is used to provide thresholds to extract the dates associated with significant increases on the time series of the CSD indicators. We apply CSD theory on water level data of Kelantan River and found that it is a reliable technique to produce a FLEWS as it demonstrates an increasing pattern near the flood events. We then apply quantile estimation on the time series of CSD indicators and we manage to establish an early warning signal for ten of the twelve flood events. The other two events are detected on the first day of the flood.

Keywords: critical slowing down; water level; quantile; flood early warning system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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