European Flood Awareness System (EFAS)

Photo: Andre Kuenzelmann/UFZ, Elbe 2002 flood The European Commission’s Communication “Towards a Stronger European Union Disaster Response” adopted and endorsed by the Council in 2010, underpins the importance of strengthening concerted actions for natural disasters including floods, which are amongst the costliest natural disasters in the EU.

The European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), developed to produce European overviews on ongoing and forecasted floods up to 10 days in advance, contributes to better protection of the European Citizen, the environment, property and cultural heritage. It has been developed at the European Commission’s in house science service, the Joint Research Centre since 2002 in close collaboration with the National hydrological and meteorological services, European Civil Protection through the Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC) and other research institutes.

Since 2011, EFAS is part of the Copernicus emergency management service and has now been transferred to operational service in 2012.
EFAS also represents the 1st operational hydrological network in Europe.

Aims of EFAS operational

added value early flood forecasting products to hydrological services
unique overview products of ongoing and forecast floods in Europe more than 3 days in advance

EFAS consortia

The Operational EFAS consists of several centres executed by different consortia

EFAS Computational centre - European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (UK) executes forecasts and hosts the EFAS-Information System platform
EFAS Dissemination centre - Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Rijkswaterstaat (NL) and Slovak Hydro-Meteorological Institute analyse EFAS on a daily basis and disseminate information to the partners and the MIC
EFAS Hydrological data collection centre - REDIAM (ES) and ELIMCO (ES) collect historic and realtime discharge and water level data across Europe
EFAS Meteorological data collection centre – not yet fully operationally and still managed by JRC. Collects historic and realtime meteorological data across Europe.

The European Commission is responsible for contract management.

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Contact to join the EFAS network: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Last Updated on Wednesday, 20 March 2013 12:49

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2013-06-04
COPERNICUS Emergency Management Service in support to European emergency response for the widespread flooding in Germany and neighbouring countries

On 2nd June 2013, the mapping service of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service has been activated. First maps are available on emergency.copernicus.eu.

EFAS, the early warning component of the COPERNICUS Emergency Management Service started informing EFAS partners and the Emergency Response Centre of the European Commission about the possibility of flooding since end of May.