The WRF-ERDS workflow in the November 2020 Calabria flood event

The LEXIS (Large-scale EXecution for Industry & Society) H2020 project is building an advanced engineering platform taking advantage of HPC, Cloud solutions and Big Data, leveraging existing HPC infrastructures. In the framework of the LEXIS project, CIMA Research Foundation is running a three nested domain WRF Model with European coverage and radar data assimilation over Italy. WRF data is then processed by ITHACA Extreme Rainfall Detection System (ERDS), an early warning system developed for the monitoring of heavy rainfall events. The WRF-ERDS workflow has been applied to the heavy rainfall event that affected Southern Italy, in particular Calabria Region, at the end of November 2020. Rainfall depths obtained using global-scale rainfall datasets and WRF data have been compared both with rain gauge data and with the daily bulletins issued by the Italian Civil Protection Department. The data obtained by running the WRF-ERDS workflow shows as an advanced engineering platform based on HPC and cloud solutions can provide more detailed forecasts to an early warning system like ERDS.