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Following the disastrous floods in the Elbe and Danube river basins in
August 2002, the European Commission announced the development of a
European Flood Alert System (EFAS http://floods.jrc.ec.europa.eu/). EFAS
will provide medium-range flood simulations across Europe with a
lead-time between 3 to 15 days.
EFAS will provide the European Commission with overview information,
which is comparable across Europe, for the preparation and management of
aid during a flood crisis. The national hydrological services and water
authorities will benefit from the additional medium-range flood information that will contribute to increased preparedness for future
flood events. EFAS is aimed at complementing national flood forecasting
systems, not replacing them.
Since the beginning of this project EFAS has evolved to a
state-of-the-art flood forecasting system with several pioneering
products, such as probabilistic flood forecasting and novel analysis and
communication methods used for interpretation of multiple forecasts. The
prototype has matured from a research project to a pre-operational
system providing national water authorities with information on
probabilities of early flood warnings, 24 hours per day and 365 days per
year.
ECMWF is involved in the project for the transfer of EFAS to operational service.
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