Floodar
Deployed & validated

Flash-flood early warning

Know water.
Act sooner.

A flash flood reaches a village in 15 minutes. Floodar warns you before the water arrives.

SHMÚ
VÚVH
LIFE FLOPRES
ČHMÚ
EU LIFE programme

Deployed & validated with independent national authorities.

Flash floods arrive in minutes.
District-level warnings don't.

Floods are Europe's costliest natural hazard, and flash floods are the deadliest, fast-growing kind. They are born in small headwater catchments, where the wave can reach a municipality in under fifteen minutes. Yet the systems meant to protect those villages fail them three times over.

47 %

Of the EU's €822 bn weather & climate losses since 1980 are flood related.

3 – 10 km

The storm-cell size national radar networks cannot resolve.

<15 min

For a flash-flood wave to reach a small headwater village.

14 k+

EU flood-risk areas legally required to have early warning by 2027.

  1. 1.

    National radar misses the storm.

    National radar misses the storm. Flash-flood core spans 3-10 km, which is smaller than the resolution of grid that issues alerts at district level.

  2. 2.

    Commercial monitoring skips the village.

    River-sensing providers serve national hydromet institutes, not the small municipality.

  3. 3.

    Level sensors only react.

    They confirm a flood wave once it arrives. They don't predict it.

Rescuer wading through a flooded street in Valencia, 2024

Valencia, 2024

232 lives lost across 78 municipalities. Storm Boris — €4.2 billion across six countries. Sudden, hyperlocal, and unpredicted at the scale that matters.

One end-to-end system,
from the storm cloud to the citizen's phone.

Floodar is the first to combine self-calibrating river hydrometry, AI convective nowcasting, and a daily-value climate platform, at a price a small municipality can actually afford.

Diagram of a catchment with Floodar sensors, GIS and an evacuation alert on a phone

IoT Sensors

Industrial-grade IoT sensors monitor the local points where flood risk begins. Built on Meratch technology proven by 100,000+ sensors across 50+ countries, the system is reliable, low-maintenance and ready for early warning.

Storm Nowcasting+

Our meteorologist-built Convective Potential Index predicts the storm before the rain even falls. AI weather models combined with 2.5-minute satellite rapid-scan and lightning turn raw atmosphere into one plain-language warning: “torrential rain risk today.”

Local Weather+

The same backbone delivers an industrial-grade hyperlocal forecast every citizen uses daily: two dry days to mow, frost alerts, irrigation timing. Plus drought monitoring from the same sensors. An emergency system that shows its value every single day.

We watch the atmosphere load, then track the storm hours before the first drop.

Days to hours before the first drop, the Convective Potential Index reads instability, moisture and wind shear. As storms initiate, minute-cadence radar pinpoints exactly which catchment is about to be hit at a resolution national warnings never reach.

Floodar
Every catchment, on one screen.

Meratch portal: the operational Floodar early-warning module on desktop and in every citizen's pocket. Map, in-stream gauges, rainfall trigger and impact-based alerts.

Floodar map of a river basin with gauges, rainfall triggers and alerts
Phone in hand showing an 'Evacuate now — flood in 1 hour' alert

Whole family of field-proven sensors.

The self-calibrating Meratch Q keeps an entire low-cost network accurate. Around it, three more Meratch sensors widen what Floodar sees — from rainfall in the sky to moisture in the ground.

Meratch Q mounted under a road bridge

Meratch Q

Self-calibrating river discharge — 60 GHz radar level, radar surface velocity and a no-moving-parts lidar cross-section.

Meratch radar level sensor

Radar Level Sensor

Non-contact 60 GHz radar water level - the workhorse that densifies coverage across a whole catchment.

Meratch rain sensor on a pole

Rain Sensor

Hyperlocal rainfall measurement that feeds the nowcaster and the 1-hour trigger which fires the warning.

Meratch soil-moisture sensor in the ground

Soil Moisture Sensor

Soil water content for runoff modelling and the drought-monitoring layer of Local Weather+.

Satellite and a Meratch sensor

Redundant comms

LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, 2G and satellite backup keep data flowing even when terrestrial networks fail during a storm — no dead zones precisely when the warning matters most.

Meratch sensor electronics with a cloud mark

Safety-critical design

High-quality electronics and advanced data-quality control flag suspicious readings and adjust predictions — hardened for civil-protection-grade, safety-critical infrastructure.

From the field: deployments.

268

IoT sensors across 6 SK–PL catchments

4

Storm seasons, zero false alarms

1mm

Accuracy vs SHMÚ national etalon

409

Station network delivered to ČHMÚ

Radar level sensor on an arm above a stream

Radar level sensor (streamside)

Radar level sensor mounted on an extension arm to a tree, positioned directly above the channel to track river levels in real time.

Solar-powered rain gauge on a pole above a village

Rain gauge

Solar-powered rain sensor deployed at the edge of the catchment, feeding live precipitation data into the early-warning network.

Team installing a radar level sensor on a road bridge

Radar level sensor (bridge-mounted)

Radar level sensor fixed to a road bridge, measuring water level and flow in the stream below without ever touching the water.

A closed loop that buys you time.

Predict the storm, densify the network only when it matters, confirm the wave in the water, and warn in plain language. Each step extends the actionable lead time and multiplies battery life along the way.

Predict

Hours ahead, the Convective Potential Index flags when conditions favour extreme-rainfall storms.

Densify

On elevated risk the field network switches to minute-level reporting. Calm weather means years of battery saved.

Confirm

Deployed sensors confirm the rising wave while the nowcaster tracks exactly where the storm initiates.

Warn

An impact-based, plain-language alert reaches the mayor and citizens, with a 10 / 50 / 100 % risk semaphore.

Find your municipality's flood risk for free.

Type your town name and get a flash-flood vulnerability report — a scientific risk index, economic exposure generated from public topography, rainfall and infrastructure data.

Download an example report:

TrstenáZemianske podhradie
Page from a Floodar flash-flood vulnerability report: terrain classification and flood susceptibility

Behind every alert is a real scientist.

Jozef Pecho

Jozef Pecho

Climate Analyst

Jozef has strong expertise in climate analysis and the evaluation of climate risks and extremes. At Meratch, he turns climate data into actionable insights for hydroclimatic monitoring and forecasting.

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FAQ

Be ready to protect what matters most.

Tell us about your municipality and we'll show you exactly where the water rises first and how much warning Floodar can buy you.