Oman will get an early warning system to predict flash flood three to six hours before it occurs, said Ahmed Al Barwani, water resources expert at the Ministry of Regional Municipalities and Water Resources. “The model is expected to be ready in the next 12 months in cooperation with the meteorology department,” he said, while presenting a paper on ‘Flood mitigation and management’, at the second edition of the Drainage Rehabilitation and Wastewater Management conference that opened in Muscat on Monday. Mohsin Mohamed Al Shaikh, chairman of Muscat Municipality, inaugurated the conference. Al Barwani said work on this has already been assigned to a consultant in California, US. Elaborating on flash flood, he said that in areas of steep topography, in small drainage basins, and wadis, floodwaters can rise very quickly with little or no warning. “When floods tend to be intense, short-term event of high velocity, they are known as flash floods,” he said. The entire incident lasts only for four to six hours and damages usually begin to occur within an hour after heavy rainfall. “Here, the rainfall in arid areas tend to be very localised, intense, and for short durations, falling on bare land with limited or sparse vegetative cover generating flash floods,” he explained. Floods are a natural phenomenon and unavoidable, so awareness is very important to avoid casualties, and people should follow the weather forecast. “We should not forget that floods can occur anytime, so we should be on alert,” he noted.