ZHANG Hong-ping, LIU Shu, LIU Yuan-yuan, HU Chang-wei

Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China

Abstract: Early Warning System (EWS) is an important measure for flash floods disaster control in mountainous areas. In China early warning for flash flood in mountainous areas is usually based on the critical rainfall. However, there is some misunderstanding on the critical rainfall during calculation and application of it in EWS, which leads to more uncertainty. Therefore, it is necessary to describe the basic concept of the critical rainfall. Based on that, a method to calculate the critical rainfall and how to use it in EWS is proposed.

Key words: mountain flood, critical rainfall, early warning system

Published in: Journal of China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (Vol. 12 No. 1, 2014)