The disastrous floods in the Elbe and Danube river basins in August 2002 were a wake up call for Europe that flood forecasting can not only be dealt with on regional and national level, but that efforts are needed to bridge communication between different authorities across the borders. It was also recognised that trans-national floods may need longer warning times to be efficiently addressed. The European Commission acted with the launch of the European Flood Alert System (COM(2002)-481), that is being developed at the Joint Research Centre in close collaboration with the National flood forecasting centres in the member states as well as several meteorological services.

Dresden train station during the 2002 floods; photo with courtesy of U. Höhne

EFAS Members status on Jan 2012

The European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) – increased preparedness for floods Flood warning information up to 10 days in advance. The information is designed to be complementary to national operational flood forecasting information and is distributed to the EFAS partner network twice a day through this password protected webpage European overview of ongoing and forecasted floods providing the European Commission with useful information for the preparation and management of aid during flood crises Application of state of the art weather forecasts and novel methods in probabilistic flood forecasting Research applied to practical operations

EFAS products are regularly reviewed by the EFAS partner network which currently consists of 24 National flood forecasting centres across Europe. EFAS is currently under development at the European Commission Joint Research Centre. More detailed information on EFAS and the JRC activities on floods can be found on http://floods.jrc.ec.europa.eu.

If you need more information contact the EFAS Team.