MedEWSa project

Mediterranean and Pan-European Forecast and Early Warning System against Natural Hazards (MedEWSa) is a €5m Innovation action (IA) project funded by the EC Horizon programme (#101121192). MedEWSa includes 30 partners, led by WMO, and will run for 36 months from 1st November 2023. Natural hazards, such as extreme weather events, are exacerbated by climate change. As a result, emergency responses are becoming more protracted, expensive, frequent, and stretching limited available resources. This is especially apparent in rapidly warming regions. MedEWSa addresses these challenges by providing novel solutions to ensure timely, precise, and actionable impact and finance forecasting, and early warning systems (EWS) that support the rapid deployment of first responders to vulnerable areas. MedEWSa will deliver a sophisticated, comprehensive, and innovative pan-European–Mediterranean–African solution comprising a range of complementary services. Building on existing tools MedEWSa will develop a fully integrated impact-based multi-hazard EWS. MedEWSa will be an exemplar of the UN Secretary General’s March 2022 call to ensure that everyone on Earth is protected from extreme weather and climate-related hazards by EWS within the next five years. Through eight carefully selected pilot sites with a history of being impacted by natural hazards and extreme events with cascading effects, four twins will be created: Twin #1: Greece (Attica) – Ethiopia (National Parks): wildfires and extreme weather events (droughts, wind) Twin #2: Italy (Venice) – Egypt (Alexandria / Nile Delta): coastal floods and storm surges Twin #3: Slovakia (Kosice) – Georgia (Tbilisi): floods and landslides Twin #4: Spain (Catalonia) – Sweden (countrywide): heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. The twins will bridge areas with different climatic/physiographic conditions, yet subject to similar hazards, and are well positioned to deliver long-term bi-directional knowledge transfer.