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Report -
WMO Flood Forecasting Initiative
Technical conference on Improved Meteorological and Hydrological
Forecasting
Geneva, Switzerland, 20-23 November 2006
The Final Draft Report of the meeting, including the participants list,
can be seen here
Meeting participants at the HMEI display area |
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HMEI Attendance and Poster Display
The HMEI Secretariat, Bruce Sumner and Christine Charstone, attended sessions of this conference considered
of interest to the HMEI Membership, as observers. The small associated poster display had posters from HMEI manufacturers:
Delta-T
Devices Ltd,
Eijkelkamp
Agrisearch Equipment and OTT Messtechnik GmbH & CO. KG.
HMEI also displayed two large posters. CDs of the HMEI
Member Products Catalogue and other HMEI information was also available at the poster
display area for the meeting attendees.
The posters were obviously of much interest to the meeting participants
and over 50 HMEI CD-ROM catalogues were taken by participants.
Opening at 9am
Dr Bruce Stewart welcomed the attendees and asked the WMO Secretary
General to open the meeting.
The WMO Secretary General, Michel Jarruad,
opened the conference stressing the importance of cooperative action in
the Meteorological and Hydrological areas, between the various WMO
Members; especially to improve Flood Forecasting and resulting Disaster
Prevention around the world. He said that the outcome of the workshop
would have an influence on the future policies governments made.
Keynote Speech - Status of Early Warning and
Forecasting in National Meteorological and Hydrological Services
This presentation first highlighted the
statistics concerned with loss of life and costs from floods and
disasters. Gaps in the world flood forecasting identified that
only 1/3 of countries have combined Meteorological and Hydrological
services and only about 1/3 could generate usable data for disaster
flood forecasting. 50% of countries only have sufficient flood
forecasting capabilities, the lack is particularly evident in African
countries. This highlighted the necessity of cooperation between
services to help overcome these gaps.
Sessions 1 & 2
These sessions first looked at a presentation concerned with the Key
Deliverables that are hoped to be eventually achieved as a result of
this Workshop.
Presentations followed of Regional expert meetings and the
experiences of various regional experiences with flood disaster
forecasting networks.
The supplementary document with the summaries of the regional reports
can be seen here.
There was a presentation on the Development of a European Flood Alert System (EFAS)
by the European Commission Joint Research Centre. This is an extensive
and sophisticated System, which could certainly be seen as a "best
practise" initiative. However questions would still remain for use of
such a costly system for use in less and least developed countries with
less resources.
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| The TC on
Meteorological and Hydrological Forecasting at work with the
CAeM President Bruce Stewart on the podium and the HMEI
Executive Secretary, Bruce Sumner, in the front row of the
meeting. |
Presentations on Country Experiences from Mozambique,
Vietnam and France, followed after the lunch period.
Session 4
The Keynote Speech: User Requirements for Flood Forecasting Services and
Products,
Bruce Stewart presented the document entitled " Strategy and
Action Plan for the Enhancement of Cooperation between National
Meteorological and Hydrological Services for Improved Flood
Forecasting".
Click here to see this document.
Item 5.1.1 Strengthening of Observing and
Information Systems, of the document presents the key issue of
interest for HMEI Members. Box3 - Actions - Recommended for the
strengthening of observing and information systems, on page 16 of the
Strategy and Action Final Plan, defines the WMO recommendations
for this issue.
Session 5
Keynote Speech: Hydrological forecasting models
This presentation noted that in use at the NHSs there are Hydrological
modelling tools from various manufacturers, using a variety of data
output formats, with attendant problems for sharing of data between
different agencies.
The presentation also outlined the optimum type of system
that could be used for best practice. Requirements such as, easily
accessed interface and various modules that provide the various
functions necessary, and an open integration platform that can
accommodate various models, were emphasised. This sort of system is currently used by UK, with other
countries' agencies to follow.
Session 6
Keynote Speech: How can the WMO Information System (WIS) meet the needs
of the forecasting and prediction services
Jack Hayes from WMO World Weather Watch presented the WIS to the
meeting; its features and future vision. The "future vision" for WIS
emphasises an integrated approach for all WIS systems. WIS will be a
linkage for all the WMO programmes and also to GEOS. Internet access
will be a strong feature of the architecture of WIS. In this way the
accessibility to WIS by less developed countries can be facilitated.
Discussion
After the presentation it was considered that the benefits to hydrology
of using WIS were both:
 long term
benefits for the world wide community with predicting events as part of
an overall earth system, rather than a series of separate systems;
the short term
benefits of having access to extra data from the meteorology community,
in a consistent format.
This implies the need for a consistent data format to be established and
informed to the private industry, so that systems and equipment can be
manufactured to meet the requirements of WIS.
Session 8
Capacity Building in NMHSs to make use of weather forecasting for
hydrological forecasting information/products
The meeting chairman stated that consideration of new methods of
presenting data and new technologies needed to be considered, and also
staff training, when looking at capacity building to enable a level of
synthesis of weather forecasting and hydrology forecasting, for adequate
Flood Forecasting. Box 9-- Actions - Recommended
for promoting training and capacity building in NMHSs,
Item 5.1.7 Promoting Training and Capacity Building in NMHSs of
the afore mentioned "Proposed Strategy and
Action Plan for Improved Flood
Forecasting", on page 26 of the
Strategy and Action Final Plan, defines the WMO recommendations
for this issue.
Discussion reflected a high interest in training for a
cross-cutting understanding between hydrologists and meteorologists,
this issue was considerably discussed and considered very important.
Sessions 9-10-11
These sessions were concerned with strategy planning and creating
the work plan for implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan
Documents resulting from the conference.
See Implement Action Plan
Close of Conference
The meeting chairman, Bruce Stewart, closed the conference on the
afternoon of 23 November, 2006.
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