In a country where conflict has disrupted institutions, expertise and critical infrastructure, maintaining forecasting capabilities was far from guaranteed. The experience developed in Sudan demonstrates how Early Warning Systems can become an infrastructure for resilience, even in the most fragile contexts.
There are infrastructures we can see: a bridge, a dam, a road.
And then there are others – invisible ones – that only become apparent when they stop functioning.
An Early Warning System belongs to this second category. Every day, it connects observations, meteorological models, hydrological data, territorial analyses, operational procedures and people. It is a chain of knowledge that transforms an atmospheric phenomenon into a decision, a decision into action, and action into protected lives.
But what happens when that chain is broken?
Over the past few years, this question has become increasingly central to the international scientific and technical community. The territories most exposed to the impacts of the climate crisis increasingly overlap with those affected by conflict, political instability and humanitarian emergencies. It is precisely where Early Warning Systems are most needed that keeping them operational becomes most challenging.
Sudan is now one of the most significant examples of this challenge.
Since 2023, the country has been engulfed in a conflict that has triggered one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises. At the same time, it continues to face extreme rainfall, floods, droughts and heatwaves, all intensified by climate change and further exacerbating the vulnerability of local communities. Conflict has not replaced climate risk; it has made it even more complex.
The Sudanese experience demonstrates that building an Early Warning System in a fragile context is not simply a matter of transferring technology. It requires building long-term partnerships, preserving local expertise, and continuously adapting tools and operational procedures to an evolving context. This is the path developed over recent years through collaboration between Sudanese institutions, regional climate centres and international organisations, the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), and CIMA Research Foundation – a collaborative effort that has now become the focus of international scientific discussion.
Not maintaining the system. Rethinking it.
When conflict disrupted people’s lives, paralysed institutional operations and forced the closure of, among others, the headquarters of the Sudan Meteorological Authority in Khartoum, the challenge was far more than technical. One of the country’s key national infrastructures for meteorological observation and forecasting suddenly ceased to operate. Many experts were forced to leave the country or relocate elsewhere, dispersing decades of scientific knowledge and operational experience developed under highly challenging conditions.
Meteorologists, climatologists and technical experts continued their work from Port Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt and other countries across the region. Through shared tools, common operational procedures and continuous collaboration with regional partners, operational bulletins continued to be produced every day in both English and Arabic, providing an essential service to national authorities and humanitarian organisations operating on the ground.
With the support of the Italian Cooperation through the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), efforts focused on sustaining and ensuring the operational continuity of Sudan’s national Early Warning System, keeping institutions, forecasters and disaster risk management authorities connected throughout the conflict.
The first lesson from Sudan is therefore that the continuity of an Early Warning System does not depend solely on infrastructure. It depends on the ability to preserve, connect and strengthen human and scientific capital.
From weather forecasting to impact forecasting
Keeping the system operational was the first challenge. Making it more useful was the second.
For many years, meteorological bulletins focused primarily on forecast rainfall intensity, temperature and wind conditions. Today, this information alone is no longer sufficient to support decision-making. Those coordinating emergency response need to know which areas will be most exposed, how many people could potentially be affected, which infrastructures are most vulnerable, and where resources should be prioritised.
For this reason, the work carried out in Sudan has progressively transformed the national system by introducing Impact-Based Forecasting (IBF) methodologies, combining weather forecasts with exposure and vulnerability information to produce operational bulletins focused on anticipated impacts.
As explained by Dalal Babikier Mohammed Homoudi, meteorologist at the Sudan Meteorological Authority, the transformation can be summarised in a simple sentence: “We have moved from forecasting what the weather will be to forecasting what the weather will do.”
Behind these words lies a profound shift in perspective. It is not only the content of the bulletin that has changed, but also the language through which science supports those responsible for making decisions.
Innovation starts with data
Every forecast is only as reliable as the observations on which it is built. For this reason, one of the most significant developments of recent months has been the strengthening of Sudan’s monitoring network.
Five new ACRONET monitoring stations are now operational across the country and fully integrated into the national observation system. In a country where conflict has compromised much of the technical infrastructure, their value extends far beyond the installation of new equipment.
Each observation collected contributes to validating high-resolution meteorological models, improving forecast accuracy and helping to rebuild the country’s capacity to monitor environmental conditions in real time. These are not simply sensors; they are new points of connection between the territory and the national decision-making system.
At the same time, the operational forecasting chain based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model has remained fully operational, producing weather forecasts with a 72-hour lead time at a 3 km spatial resolution. The system continues to be refined through ongoing research conducted by Sudanese forecasters, supported by the collaboration with Resurgence UK. The operational forecasting chain is further integrated with drought monitoring and flood forecasting tools, including applications at the urban scale. It is precisely this integration of observations, numerical modelling and impact assessment that represents one of the most innovative methodological elements of the Sudanese experience.
An Early Warning System is above all a system of collaboration
Technology alone, however, is not enough. One of the most innovative aspects of the Sudanese experience lies in the way forecasts are produced.
The new Situation Room of the National Council for Civil Defence (NCCD), inaugurated in Port Sudan in February 2025, represents not simply a new operational facility but a different governance model. It is the place where meteorologists, hydrologists, civil protection authorities and other institutions jointly build the national risk picture. As Dalal Babikier Mohammed Homoudi explains, “we now speak with one voice.” Every institution across the country, together with representatives of the Sudanese scientific diaspora, contributes its expertise to producing a shared impact assessment.
Forecasting therefore becomes a process of co-production of knowledge, in which each discipline contributes to transforming meteorological information into actionable intelligence for decision-makers.
This is what the scientific community increasingly refers to as a multi-risk approach, one of the most promising directions for the future development of Early Warning Systems.
The lesson from Sudan
For many years, Early Warning Systems were largely regarded as the outcome of already strong and well-functioning institutions. The Sudanese experience suggests a different perspective.
This was also highlighted during EGU 2026 in Vienna, where Abuelgasim Musa, from the Sudan Meteorological Authority, presented how, despite conflict and the displacement of many technical experts, Sudan succeeded in building something unprecedented: a coordination mechanism bringing together civil protection authorities and humanitarian response actors. “Today we produce bulletins resulting from the joint work of multiple sectors,” Musa explained. “This is something we had not been able to achieve before the war.”
In fragile contexts, an Early Warning System is far more than a disaster risk management tool. It is part of a country’s institutional capacity. Continuing to produce observations, share data, issue operational bulletins and maintain collaborative networks means preserving expertise, procedures and institutional knowledge precisely when they are at greatest risk of being lost.
In this sense, the work developed together with the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and Sudanese institutions demonstrates how international cooperation can contribute not only to emergency response but also to preserving the national capacities and relationships that will make recovery possible once the emergency has passed.
This experience shows that scientific methodologies, advanced technologies and collaborative governance can be successfully adapted to fragile contexts without compromising scientific rigour or operational effectiveness.
Today, the question is no longer whether it is possible to build an Early Warning System during conflict.
The real question is whether the international community can afford to wait for peace before doing so.