Abstract:

River floods are considered one of the most dangerous natural hazards worldwide. River floods’ intensity and frequency have increased in recent decades as a consequence of the climate change, and future projections are even worse. In this context, the knowledge, predictability and mitigation of flood events suppose one of the most important challenges for the scientific community, especially in the local areas most vulnerable to floods. In this framework, the Environmental Physics Laboratory (EPHYSLAB, https://ephyslab.uvigo.es/) of the University of Vigo developed an Early Warning System for floods in the Miño-Sil river basin (NW Spain) called MIDAS (MIño flooD Alert System). MIDAS has been developed in collaboration with the corresponding river basin authority (Confederación Hidrográfica del Miño-Sil, https://www.chminosil.es/es/) and supported by the international project INTERREG-POCTEP RISC_ML (https://risc-ml.eu). MIDAS is mainly integrated by two modules: i) a hydrological module, based on the software HEC-HMS (Hydrologic Engineering Center – Hydrologic Modelling System, https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-hms/), which transforms the precipitation in the corresponding river flow; and ii) a hydraulic module, based on the 2D Iber+ numerical model (https://www.iberaula.es/), which provides flood maps in vulnerable areas.
Once the system was successfully validated, the main question that arose was: How to transfer both the knowledge acquired with the development of this system, as well as the capabilities of the final product, to the scientific community, decision-makers, university students and society in general?

Four action fronts were addressed to achieve this objective:

- Scientific publications: some articles were published in international journals to transfer the methodologies developed and results obtained to the scientific community.
• https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-2583-2019.
• https://doi.org/10.3390/w12092319.
• https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-3957-2022.

- Congress organization: a congress was organized to serve as a forum in which scientists and decision-makers exchange ideas that allow the development of tools and protocols for actions focused on the mitigation of flood events.
• https://floods2022.uvigo.es/.

- Subjects at the University: some aspects of the hydrological and hydraulic modules that integrate the system developed were included in subjects at the University of Vigo, both in Master and Doctoral Programs, in order to transfer part of the knowledge acquired to the university students.
• Master in Oceanography (https://masteroceanografia.com/):
 Subject: Climate Models.
• Doctoral Program in Water, Sustainability and Development (http://pddaauga.webs.uvigo.es/es/):
 Subject: Modeling of the risks of flooding by rivers and torrential rains.

- Dissemination in the media: news and information about the system and its capabilities were published in several media, including the project website, newspapers, and the research group website.


The main conclusions are that, by means of these four actions, an adequate transference level of the knowledge generated in the University was achieved. Therefore, the proposed transference strategies can be considered an example of a successful interchange between University research and the different involved sectors.

Keywords:

University research, flood early warning system, knowledge and technology transfer.