Mediterranean and Pan-European Forecast and Early Warning System against Natural Hazards (MedEWSa), the 3 year EU Horizon project funded with €5m from the European Commission and coordinated by World Meteorological Organization, kicked off on 9 & 10 November in Athens.
Convergence is one of the 30 partners which participated in the kick-off meeting and comprise the consortium of the milestone project. The aim of MedEWSa is delivering a network of effective and interoperable Multi-Hazard impact-based Early Warning Systems to span the pan-European-Mediterranean-African area.
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 (see: Early warnings for all: Executive action plan 2023-2027).
