"Floods are the most widespread and frequent natural disaster responsible for significant loss of lives and property each year. The European Environmental Agency estimated that floods in Europe between 1998 and 2002 caused about 700 deaths, the displacement of about half a million people and at least 25 billion Euros in insured economic losses. As such, one of the four priority areas in FP7 has been identified as triggering factors and forecasting and mitigation strategies for natural hazards.Flood early warning systems are the most effective way to mitigate flood induced hazards. The reliability of such systems depends on the availability of timely and good-quality rainfall estimates. Although many of the regions in Europe are equipped with dense rain gauge networks, the station density varies greatly from country to country, which can affect the quality of the model simulations. Hence exploiting alternative ways, such as satellite-based products, for estimating rainfall having continuous spatial coverage and short latency will be potentially beneficial for mitigating flood risks.The overall goal of this project is to “advance the utility of satellite-based rainfall estimates for hydrologic modeling, specifically for flood monitoring”. The expected outcomes of this research are: 1) a large database of dynamic and static datasets for the Western-Black Sea basin, Turkey, 2) A methodology for adjusting satellite-based rainfall estimates, 3) intercomparison study revealing the degree of agreement between rain gauge and satellite-based rainfall products over the study area before/after the adjustment, 3) A hydrologic model that is implemented for the study basin using rainfall estimates from rain gauges and existing/adjusted satellite rainfall products, 4) An improved methodology for calibration and evaluation of hydrological models, 5) An analysis providing insights into the value of existing/adjusted satellite-based rainfall estimates for streamflow simulations."