Since February 1, 2024, the NINA warning app no longer only shows flood information for the entire state as a whole, but locally and in detail. This means you can find out more precisely than before with the app about whether you are specifically at risk from flooding.
But above all: All smartphones with the NINA warning app installed now receive a notification when flood information has been issued for the region selected by the user. To do this, users must either subscribe to the current location and be in the catchment area, or receive a flood information notification for a subscribed location if it is in the catchment area. It is important that you have activated the “Receive flood warnings” function in the app settings.
Previously, the NINA warning app provided flood information from the state flood control centers for the entire state, even if only individual areas were affected. This wasn’t very helpful, especially in larger federal states. Now NINA, on the other hand, provides region-specific flood information.
The issuing state offices and institutions can issue this flood information either for river catchment areas or river sections within their federal state or for their districts. Unaffected by this, the responsible emergency response and disaster control authorities can continue to issue civil protection warnings about floods, which are also included in the NINA warning app.
This is how flood information is created
You have been able to find such precise flood information about individual cities and regions on the Internet for a long time at hochwasserzentralen.de. The information from this website matches that in NINA now. The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) explains how this data comes about.
In the event of a flood or impending flood, the state environmental offices or institutes often continuously publish hydrological situation reports and flood information on their flood portals. These usually contain detailed information about the respective flood risk in the individual catchment areas.
The German state offices or institutes for the environment are connected to the cross-state flood portal (LHP). There is also the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, which issues storm surge warnings for the North and Baltic Sea coasts, as well as the flood warning and forecast services of the neighboring states France, Luxembourg, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
The LHP bundles this flood information and shows the overall situation in current situation maps on hochwasserzentralen.de. In order to achieve a wide range of information, the LHP’s flood information is automatically displayed in the DWD warning weather app and in the NINA warning app.
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