Led by the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, the MedEWSa project (Mediterranean and pan-European forecast and Early Warning System against natural hazards) is funded under Horizon Europe and aims to create a multi-hazard and impact-based alerting system at the pan-European, Mediterranean, and African levels.
MedEWSa is part of the EW4All Initiative, which aims to ensure that every person on the planet is protected from natural and climatic risks by 2027 through the use of Early Warning Systems (EWS). The project, which began in 2023 and is expected to conclude in October 2026, aims to provide innovative solutions that enable timely and accurate impact forecasts and impact-based EWS for various natural hazards.
The project is implemented through activities and studies in eight pilot areas, selected from European, African, and Southern Mediterranean states due to their history of catastrophic natural events with cascading impacts. The pilot areas are divided into “twins” that connect areas that, although having different climatic conditions, are vulnerable to the same natural hazards and allow for the bidirectional transfer of long-term knowledge:
- Attica region (Greece) and Ethiopian national parks: wildfires and extreme events related to drought
- Venice (Italy) and the Alexandria area and the Nile Delta (Egypt): coastal flooding and tsunamis
- Kosice (Slovakia) and Tbilisi (Georgia): landslides and floods
- Catalonia region (Spain) and Sweden (national level): heatwaves, droughts, and forest fires
CIMA Research Foundation’s contribution
Within the project, CIMA Research Foundation is asked to improve the DSDS for wildfires in Ethiopia, which is necessary for comparison with what will be developed for the Attica region and to enhance knowledge of risk, prevention, and preparedness in the context of Ethiopian protected areas and natural parks. In this context, we enhance wildfire management capabilities through monitoring and forecasting systems using various tools, including the creation of hazard maps based on machine learning technologies and the use of modeling, especially the models developed by CIMA Research Foundation: RISICO ETHIOPIA (a fire hazard classification system designed for the Ethiopian context, already implemented nationally) and PROPAGATOR, a wildfire propagation simulator for scenario creation in three Ethiopian protected areas.
Our role is to contribute to the development of guidelines for participatory emergency planning. Additionally, these guidelines will include also multi-hazard oriented alert messaging models.
CIMA Research Foundation is also participating in activities planned for two other twin areas of the project. In particular, we are involved in strengthening flood and landslide management and risk reduction capacities for the Kosice (Slovakia) – Tbilisi (Georgia) twin, and for the Catalonia (Spain) – Sweden twin. In the first case, activities revolve around the entire forecast operational system to develop a new impact-based system, while in the second case, the focus is on using demonstrator projects to enable knowledge sharing between these two different climate hotspots.
