Each two-days workshop allowed the discussion and review of the preliminary analyses carried out on the early warning systems in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali and Togo (and soon Ghana), in order to define and consolidate, with the local institutions of each country, the basis for a basin-scale early warning system
Five of the six online workshops, organized within the project “Integrating Flood and Drought Management and Early Warning for Climate Change Adaptation in the Volta Basin“, were held and focused on the development of an early warning system in the Volta Basin. The last workshop, to be held in Ghana, is foreseen in January 2021 due to the COVID-19.
Over the years, floods and droughts have become increasingly frequent and intense in the Volta basin, which crosses six West African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali and Togo. The aim of the project, started in 2019 and financed by the World Meteorological Organization, with the participation of the Volta Basin Authority and the Global Water Partnership, is to strengthen the prevention and management of these risks, as also consequently the resilience of the populations.
An important initial activity concerned the analysis of the Early Warning Systems (EWS) existing at national level, with the aim of identifying their main strengths and possible critical points. The culmination of this analysis was the review of the results by the national agencies participating to the workshops: national departments of water resources, meteorology, civil protection, water and climate change research institutes and geography institutes. The review took place during the first day of the workshops carried out in each of the six countries.
The organization of these workshops was based on a model as participatory as possible, avoiding any kind of unilateral approach, in order to get as final outputs the result of a collaborative work between different figures and bodies. For this reason, during the workshops the same participants – who also included representatives of NGOs and local authorities – were asked to divide themselves into groups, according to their institutional role and profession, and to carry out a self-assessment of national early warning systems.
The results were then presented by each working group, comparing them with a general overview of an optimal early warning system. Thanks to this strategy, it was possible, first of all, to compare strengths and weaknesses in an open manner, even among the participants themselves, and, at the same time, to consolidate the information contained within the analysis document of each national early warning system. In addition, the workshops were an opportunity to put into practice some important behaviors in risk management: collaboration and exchanges among the different actors allow to facilitate coordination between different sectors, which is fundamental for the proper functioning of the management chain.
Next phases of the project include a further review and finalization of the preliminary analyses of the early warning systems of the six countries, according to the results collected during the workshops. The final goal of the work will be the implementation of the myDEWETRA.world platform, owned by the Italian Civil Protection Department and developed by CIMA Research Foundation, for the creation of VoltAlarm, a basin-scale monitoring and early warning system. The myDEWETRA.world platform is in fact a tool used for forecasting and monitoring of risks, which allows data aggregation from different forecasting models, as well as data sharing at national and international level; it can therefore allow a more effective collaboration in floods and drought management, also at basin level.
The features of myDEWETRA.world, as well as the future VoltAlarm system, were presented during the second day of each workshop. In addition to this, the program of the second day focused on the presentation of other activities of the project, carried out by institutions such as CERFE and IUCN, engaged respectively in the analysis of risk perception in 60 different sites identified in the Volta basin, and in the quantification of risk for the present ecosystem, in order to therefore develop integrated guidelines at basin level to promote the sustainability of ecosystem services.