Use case
IllustrativeCommune-level flood nowcasts with uncertainty bands
A Mekong collective publishes flood nowcasts that show uncertainty so village monitors can decide when to evacuate.
The illustrative Mekong Climate Data Collective combined river gauges, satellite water extent and volunteer river-bank photos. Instead of a single red/green alert, each commune receives a nowcast with a documented uncertainty band and a note when cloud cover degrades the satellite layer.
Village monitors asked for the uncertainty after a 2024 false-quiet night. The redesign treats the model as a briefing, not an order: commune leaders still call the evacuation. Training materials are bilingual and designed for low-bandwidth phones.
The case demonstrates how climate models can be responsible without being silent about error.
Downloads
Related records
Dataset
Mekong commune nowcast uncertainty sampleSynthetic commune-day nowcasts with uncertainty bands and a cloud-cover flag.
Publication
Innovation brief: Showing uncertainty in flood alertsA practitioner note on replacing binary flood alerts with commune-level uncertainty bands.