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    Application of a model-based rainfall-runoff database as efficient tool for flood risk management
    (Chichester : John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2013) Brocca, L.; Liersch, S.; Melone, F.; Moramarco, T.; Volk, M.
    A framework for a comprehensive synthetic rainfall-runoff database was developed to study catchment response to a variety of rainfall events. The framework supports effective flood risk assessment and management and implements simple approaches. It consists of three flexible components, a rainfall generator, a continuous rainfallrunoff model, and a database management system. The system was developed and tested at two gauged river sections along the upper Tiber River (central Italy). One of the main questions was to investigate how simple such approaches can be applied without impairing the quality of the results. The rainfall-runoff model was used to simulate runoff on the basis of a large number of rainfall events. The resulting rainfallrunoff database stores pre-simulated events classified on the basis of the rainfall amount, initial wetness conditions and initial discharge. The real-time operational forecasts follow an analogue method that does not need new model simulations. However, the forecasts are based on the simulation results available in the rainfall-runoff database (for the specific class to which the forecast belongs). Therefore, the database can be used as an effective tool to assess possible streamflow scenarios assuming different rainfall volumes for the following days. The application to the study site shows that magnitudes of real flood events were appropriately captured by the database. Further work should be dedicated to introduce a component for taking account of the actual temporal distribution of rainfall events into the stochastic rainfall generator and to the use of different rainfall-runoff models to enhance the usability of the proposed procedure.
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    Predicting Paris: Multi-Method Approaches to Forecast the Outcomes of Global Climate Negotiations
    (Lisbon : Cogitatio Press, 2016) Sprinz, Detlef F.; Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce; Kallbekken, Steffen; Stokman, Frans; Sælen, Håkon; Thomson, Robert
    We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert survey and two negotiation simulation models, namely the Exchange Model and the Predictioneer’s Game. After the event, these predictions were assessed against the coded texts that were agreed in Paris. The evidence suggests that combining experts’ predictions to reach a collective expert prediction makes for significantly more accurate predictions than individual experts’ predictions. The differences in the performance between the two different negotiation simulation models were not statistically significant.