European Flood Alert System

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The European Flood Alert System project is a European Commission initiative to increase preparedness for riverine floods across Europe.

[edit] History

Following the disastrous floods in the Elbe and Danube river basins in August 2002, the European Commission announced in the communication (COM(2002)-481) the development of a European Flood Alert System (EFAS).

[edit] Project

EFAS provides pre-operationally medium-range flood simulations across Europe with a lead-time between 3 to 10 days. The benefit of EFAS is two-fold. First, National Water Authorities benefit from additional and medium-range flood information that might contribute to increased preparedness in an upcoming flood event, Second, EFAS could provide the European Commission with useful information for the preparation and management of aid during a flood crisis. EFAS is aimed at complementing national flood forecasting systems, not to replace them. The European Flood Alert System (EFAS) activity is at present in a development and testing phase at the European Commission Joint Research Centre. The pre-operational system is now running since 2005 and is producing probabilistic and deterministic hydrological forecasts twice a day for the whole of Europe. EFAS results can be accessed by EFAS partners through a password protected web-portal (http://efas-is.jrc.it).