FlashFloodBreaker Materials
In this section you find more information material about the FlashFloodBreaker project, such as an explainer video by JustJulie, a short presentation to see "FlashFloodBreaker in a nutshell" in English and German.
Academic posters achieved on the base of the project activities are also available for download.
Furthermore you find publications from our partners and associates as well as an overview about our activities on the ground.
Illustration: 
Watch the movie in english with english subtititles here:
Um den Film auf deutsch mit deutschen Untertiteln zu schauen, klicken Sie hier:
FlashFloodBreaker auf Deutsch
Pour voir le film en français, cliquez ici.
Om de film in het Nederlands met Nederlandse ondertitels te bekijken, klik hier.
download english version here: 
download german version here:For further news about the project and upcoming events visit our Blog section
Transnational Exercise on mobile bariers, Utrecht, NL
In November 2025 the FlashFloodBreaker partners gathered in Utrecht (NL) to take part in a two day exercise organized by our host organization STOWA. This was part of the week long Cloudburst scenario, where dutch waterboards and dutch military were involved. Especially in the main areas we´ve been training (mobile barriers, sandbag science and levee guarding) substantial learnings have been made.
Learn more about the different activities enrolled at the exercise event on mobile barriers in the video.
Site Visit in Moelingen/Voeren, Flanders
In recent years the village of Moelingen (Voeren) has been hit 3 times very hard by flash floods. Each flood caused severe damage and each time it became worse, making that during the 2024 flood the village was almost completely inundated.
Our partner VMM invited the FlashFloodBreaker partnership to testify the current efforts, including the encouragement of inhabitants to protect themselves and their houses with flood barriers, both encouraging financially and by providing support in the execution of the works.
The FlashFloodBreaker partnership regularly organizes and participates in transnational training exercices. Together with our partners in the flood affected communities we do field visits in order do learn about regional and national strategies against extreme flooding events. For more information about exercises, field trips and more visit our section ACTIVITIES.
Status March 2026
1. Poster (see also section "academic posters" for download below)
Adikari, Hasitha; O’Leary, Christian; Harrington, Joe; Lynch, Conor (2025): Computer Vision in Flash Flood Forecasting: A Narrative Review of Applications, Integration Pathways, and Future Directions. Poster. Cork.
Adikari, Hasitha; O’Leary, Christian; Harrington, Joe; Lynch, Conor (2025): Toward Occlusion-Robust River Segmentation for Flash Flood Forecasting: A Comparative Study of CNN-Based Architectures on UAV RGB Imagery. Poster. Cork.
Adikari, Hasitha; O'Leary, Christian; Harrington, Joe; Lynch, Conor (2025): An Integrated Framework for Near-Real-Time Flash Flood Forecasting through Automated Ground Information Extraction via Computer Vision and a Physics-Informed Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Network. Poster. Irish National Hydrology Conference. Athlone, Ireland, 11/18/2025.
Ávila-Guzmán, Maria Paula; Kreibich, Heidi; Archambeau, Pierre; Erpicum, Sébastien; Pirotton, Michel; Cools, Mario; Dewals, Benjamin (2026): Flood impacts in the commercial sector: insights from field surveys in Belgium. Poster. European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2026. Vienna, Austria & online, 3–8 May 2026.
Beke, Pierick (2025): Runoff modeling using the Rain-On-Grid method in TELEMAC 2D. Poster. Aachen, April 2025.
Burchard, Erik von (2025): Hydrodynamic simulations of pluvial and fluvial flooding in the Emscher catchment area. Poster. Aachen, April 2025.
Huber, Sabrina (2025): Integration of hydraulic processes in 2-dimensional simulations of heavy rainfall scenarios. Poster. Aachen, April 2025.
Hupel, Giorgio (2025): Optimization of 2D simulations in urban areas with Telemac-2D. Poster. Aachen, April 2025.
Mahmood, Faisal (2025): Assessing the Impact of High-Resolution Hydrological Modelling on Streamflow and Flash-Flood Events in Crookstown Catchment. Poster. Cork.
Mahmood, Faisal; Bidroha, Basu; Harrington, Joe (2025): Flash Flood Dynamics in Ireland: A Study of Two Irish Catchments using Remote Sensing and Hydrological. Poster. Irish National Hydrology Conference. Athlone, Ireland, 11/18/2025.
Nassoh, Adil (2025): Immersive AR/VR Training for Flash Floods: Fusing Lived Experience with Real-Time Geospatial Data. Poster. Luxembourg, November 2025.
Nassoh, Adil; Teferle, Félicia Norma Rebecca (2026): Co-Creating Flash Flood Resilience: Translating Citizen and Responder Knowledge into Immersive VR/AR Training, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-10148. Available online at ORBilu: Co-Creating Flash Flood Resilience: Translating Citizen and Responder Knowledge into Immersive VR/AR Training - 2026.
Reinert, Jens; Klopries, Elena-Maria; Hassenjürgen, Paul; Menz, Alexander; Hofmann, Julian; Brüll, Catrina; Klein, Angela; Almoradie, Adrian; Johann, Georg; Schüttrumpf, Holger (2026): Quantifying System Limits: Flood Oriented Operational Stress Testing under Intensified Precipitation Regimes in Central Europe. Poster. Aachen, July 2026. NRW press conference on 08.07.2026 for the commemoration day of the extreme event in July 2021.
Schwab, Anton (2025): Differentiation and characterization of flash flood endangered areas. Poster. Aachen, April 2025.
Rodriguez Castro, Daniela; Paterka, Amélie; Cools, Mario; Archambeau, Pierre; Erpicum, Sébastien; Pirotton, Michael; Dewals, Benjamin (2025): Structural damage grade classifier for residential buildings based on the July 2021. Poster. European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Autria & online, 27 April-5/2/2025. DOI 10.5194/egusphere-egu25-2845.
Weser, Timm (2025): Transmission of flash flood simulation results into decision-relevant information. Poster. Aachen, April 2025.
2. Articles
Adikari, Hasita; O'Leary, Christian; Carroll, Sean; Harrington, Joe; Lynch, Connor (2026, June 18–19): Colour-space feature engineering and foundation models for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) water segmentation in vegetated Irish catchments. In Civil Engineering Research in Ireland 2026 (CERI2026) Conference Proceedings (pp. 545–550). Belfast, UK. ISBN 978-0-9573957-7-0. Available at cerai.net
Busker, Tim; Rodriguez Castro, Daniela; Vorogushyn, Sergiy; Kwadijk, Jaap; Zoccatelli, Davide; Oliveira, Rafaella G. L. et al. (2026): Comparing flood forecasting and early warning systems in northwestern Europe. In Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 26 (3), pp. 1457–1478. DOI: 10.5194/nhess-26-1457-2026.
De Becker, Alexander; Benjamin Dewals, Pierre Archambeau, Michel Pirroton, Sébastien Erpicum: New insights into backwater rise induced by debris blockage at bridges. In IAHR (Ed.): Book of Extended Abstracts of the 41st IAHR World Congress (Singapore, 2025). With assistance of Adrian Wing-Keung Law, Jenn Wei Er. Available online at https://2025.iahr.org/.
Leise, Volker (2024): Sturzfluten: Kooperation „FlashFloodBreaker“ will transnationale Reaktion verbessern. In EUWID Wasser und Abwasser (33). Available online at https://www.euwid-wasser.de/news/wirtschaft/sturzfluten-kooperation-flashfloodbreaker-will-transnationale-reaktion-verbessern-290724/.
Mahmood, Faisal; Harrington, Joe; Basu, Bidroha (2026): Improving Flash Flood Simulation Accuracy Using High-Resolution Sub-Daily SWAT+ Modelling: A Case Study of Crookstown Catchment, Co. Cork, Ireland. In Civil Engineering Research in Ireland 2026 (CERi2026) Conference Proceedings, p. 592. Civil Engineering Research Association of Ireland. Available at cerai.net
Murdock, Heather J.; Rodriguez Castro, Daniela; Dewals, Bemjamin; Heidenreich, Anna; Thieken, Annegret H. (2026): Learning from the past to inform flood risk management: Analysis of public survey data in Belgium on flood early warning and response during the July 2021 flood, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-6376, 2026.
Reinert, Jens; Hassenjürgen, Paul Christian; Menz, Alexander; Klopries, Elena-Maria (2025): Quantifying System Limits: Flood-Oriented Stress Testing for Adaptive Risk Governance. In: Book of Abstracts International Conference on Resilient Systems. (ICRS) 2026, Delft, The Netherlands. With assistance of Comes Tina, Dijkman Remco, Jörin Jonas, Mühlhäuser Max, Pregnolato Maria, Reuter Christian, Schaffner Christian. Delft (International Conference on Resilient Systems), pp. 223–225.
Reinert, Jens; Hofmann, Julian; Almoradie, Adrian; Brüll, Catrina (2026): Assessing the Challenges of Urban Flood Modelling: A Sensitivity Analysis Using a TELEMAC-2D Rain-on-Grid Framework in the Emscher Catchment. In Water 18 (10), p. 1224. DOI: 10.3390/w18101224.
Rodríguez Castro, D.; Cools, M.; Roucour, S.; Archambeau, P.; Molinari, D.; Scorzini, A. R. et al. (2025): Can macro- or meso-scale coping capacity variables improve the classification of building flood losses? In Nat Hazards 121 (7), pp. 8179–8209. DOI: 10.1007/s11069-025-07123-4.
Rodríguez Castro, Daniela; Rafiezadeh Shahi, Kasra; Sairam, Nivedita; Fischer, Melanie; Samprogna Mohor, Guilherme; Thieken, Annegret et al. (2025): Key Drivers of Flash Flood Damage to Private Households. In Journal of Flood Risk Management 18 (3), Article e70088, p. 67. DOI: 10.1111/jfr3.70088.
Teferle, Félicia Norma Rebecca; Nassoh, Adil (2026): FlashFloodBreaker: Transforming emergency response through immersive reality and geospatial modelling. The Innovation Platform Issue 26, pp.38-40. Available at https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/article/flashfloodbreaker-transforming-emergency-response-through-immersive-reality-and-geospatial-modelling/69410/
3. Presentations
Almoradie, A., Johann, G., Falter, D., Hofmann, J., Reinert, J., Pfister, A., Nafo, I., Obenaus, F. (2026): Next-Gen FEWS: Prototyping AI-Based 2D Flood and Impact Forecasting – Emscher Catchment, Germany. Grand Challenges Conference 2026, 23-25.03.2026, Berlin.
Mahmood, Faisal; et alli (2025): Advancing Land Cover Classification for Hydrological Modelling and Flood Resilience in Ireland using Sentinel-2 Imagery. National Environ2025 Conference. Dublin, 3/10/2025.
Reinert, Jens (2026): Quantifying System Limits: Flood-Oriented Stress Testing for Adaptive Risk Governance. International Conference on Resilient Systems. Delft, 3/23/2026. Available online at https://www.icrs26.org/home.
4. Media coverage (examples)
Interreg North-West Europe (2025): Video spotlight - German, French and Dutch fire brigades together for a flood responsive exercise. Edited by Interreg North-West Europe (13). Available online at https://mailchi.mp/nweurope/interreg-north-west-europe-newsletter-issue-february-12841041?e=915af0500a.
Nordstadtblogger-Redaktion (2024): Schutz vor Sturzfluten: Startschuss für Projekt „FlashFloodBreaker“ im belgischen Lüttich. In Die Nordstadtblogger, 7/29/2024. Available online at https://www.nordstadtblogger.de/schutz-vor-sturzfluten-startschuss-fuer-projekt-flashfloodbreaker-im-belgischen-luettich/.
Schabasser, Helene; Barco, Francesca (2025): Facing the storms together: Building resilience against weather extremes in Germany. In News & Stories 10 April 2025. Available online at https://interreg.eu/news-stories/facing-the-storms-together-building-resilience-against-weather-extremes-in-germany/.
5. Other
Emschergenossenschaft (2024): Geschäfts- und Nachhaltigkeitsbericht der Emschergenossenschaft. Essen. Available online at https://www.eglv.de/medien/infomaterial-publikationen/
See here for dowload posters that have been presented to disseminate FlashFloodBreaker results:
