Guidelines for the Assessment of National Flood Early Warning Needs

WMO Regional Training Centre (RTC) at the Universidad del Litoral, Facultad de Ingenieria en Ciencias Hidricas (UNL-FICH) hosted the first "Training of Trainers on the Assessment Guidelines for End to End Flood Forecasting and Early Warning Systems (WMO-No. 1286)" from 12 to 15 September in Argentina. The event showed trainers how to train their peers to evaluate national capability to perform flood forecasting and introduced a framework to improve service delivery.

The event attracted 15 trainers from various WMO RTCs (Argentina, India, Kenya, Russian Federation and Venezuela), National Hydrological Services (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Uruguay), and other partners of the Associated Programme on Flood Management. A team of experts from the Standing Committee for Hydrological Services and UNL-FICH delivered the training.

The Guidelines are designed to assist NHSs with different levels of flood forecasting capacity and expertise, towards improving their service provision as part of the Early Warning for All initiative. It focuses on flood hazards and evaluating national End-to-End Flood Forecasting and Early Warning System (E2E FFEWS). The figure below outlines the assessment matrix in the Guidelines.

Elements of the flood assessment matrix

The improvement of related service is based on transforming the results of the assessment process into a National Service Development Plan and on implementing improvements to activities in support of flood forecasting and the dissemination of warnings.

Flood assessment evaluation to improve services

This training of trainers, an integral part of the WMO Capacity Development Strategy, will streamline hydrological capacity development into a format of training workshops that can be replicated in different regions. The Assessment Guidelines will thereby contribute to the Early Warning for All initiative, focusing on earl warnings for flood hazards.