Flood Defence Predictor

you need to compare apples with apples.

Is the accuracy within allowed tolerances

Is the publicly available data verified , accurate , reliable and licenced to be used for non personal use ?

Is the data guaranteed to be available for the years to come. ?

No doubt 10 years is taking the pi55 and the OPW will pay over the odds. But at the end of the data are the 2 systems the same. ?

"We wouldn't have such a widespread flood problem if they would dredge the rivers once in a while..."

It's not as simple as that. When you improve drainage in an area, it moves the water more quickly to the next area where it can cause bigger issues. You can ask then why not dredge everything out to the sea but the issue is you'd have to have much wider rivers estuaries that we naturally have. Proper wetland management is a more effective alleviation measure as well as protecting the natural environment. Your point re not allowing building in flood-prone areas is super important though.

Regarding @ted1's point, I had a look at the website floodpredictor.ie and the data being used is all transparent. It comes from freely available data:

This includes very detailed high-quality data about all aspects of weather from Met Éireann’s 25 globally coordinated synoptic weather stations; 20 additional very high quality automatic weather stations; 550 meteorological monitoring sites; a network of offshore buoys tracking Atlantic conditions; coastal observatories, weather radar, satellite inputs and aircraft observations; and the Citizen Science WOW network of 100 privately owned weather stations in gardens, rooftops and schools across the country.

Altogether that adds up to about 700 land-based weather monitoring stations, alongside extensive offshore and international data inputs.

In addition, the State’s agriculture and land development agency, Teagasc, publishes real-time data collected through a network of advanced soil moisture monitoring stations that measure soil saturation at multiple depths across wider areas using highly sophisticated sensors.

On top of this the Office of Public Works has a network of 380 hydrometric stations, tracking river levels and flow rates in real time right throughout the country.

Other State agencies too have hydrometric stations and publish data including the EPA, Local Authorities, ESB, the Marine Institute, and Waterways Ireland.

Taken together, there are more than 1,000 State-owned monitoring points tracking how water moves through the Irish landscape, in addition to the 700 or so weather monitoring stations.

The predictor also uses the Brier score to measure its effectiveness (same as Met Eireann on their weather forecasts) so on the face of it, it looks all above board. Having said all of that, he is operating a subscription service for alerts etc. but with the amount of data available, it seems fairy land thinking that it could take 10 years to build a govt prediction system.

Here is the full rte article: https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0518/1573866-flood-predictor-environment/