The Integrated Flood and Drought Management and Early Warning for Climate Adaptation in the Volta Basin project is funded by the Adaptation Fund and implemented by the World Meteorological Organization, Global Water Partnership and the Volta Basin Authority. It will last four years (June 2019-June 2023) and aims to improve the flood and drought warning system in countries that share the Volta River Basin in Africa.
The Volta River Basin crosses six countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali and Togo) and covers about 400,000 square kilometres, ranging from semi-arid to semi-humid areas. The basin has been subject to many flood and drought events and, combined with an extremely fragile socio-economic fabric, these events lead to important losses in human lives, infrastructures, and in various economic sectors.
Managing flood and drought events through investments in forecasting and warning systems are essential to help reduce these losses. In this perspective, the Volta Flood and Drought Management project, coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, is looking to improve risk management capacities at the local, national and regional levels by promoting an integrated approach to consolidating risk knowledge, sharing data across institutions and facilitating the communication of warnings.
As part of the project, CIMA Research Foundation was hired by the World Meteorological Organization to evaluate the warning systems of the six countries and to formulate recommendations and a work plan for their improvement. CIMA Research Foundation will also be responsible for the implementation of the myDewetra platform, an integrated system developed by CIMA for the Italian Civil Protection Department, which allows for the real-time forecasting, monitoring and surveillance of risks of natural origin, so as to make it usable for the areas of interest.
