{"id":6565,"date":"2023-02-20T12:59:48","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T11:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/news\/science-civil-protection-and-humanitarian-aid-cima-research-foundation-and-the-italian-red-cross-work-together-for-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2023-02-21T10:01:05","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T09:01:05","slug":"science-civil-protection-and-humanitarian-aid-cima-research-foundation-and-the-italian-red-cross-work-together-for-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/news\/science-civil-protection-and-humanitarian-aid-cima-research-foundation-and-the-italian-red-cross-work-together-for-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Science, civil protection and humanitarian aid: CIMA Research Foundation and the Italian Red Cross work together for Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A support tool for the humanitarian actions deployed by the Italian Red Cross in the areas affected by the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, providing weather forecasts that can make a difference in activities. This is the Impact-Based Forecast \u2012 the daily bulletin that CIMA Research Foundation has been generating for Ukraine and several bordering areas for a year now. By highlighting possible risk situations (rain, snow, winds, temperatures and other variables) related to the presence of refugees, critical facilities or other vulnerability factors, this tool helps ensure that the humanitarian operations can take place safely and as effectively as possible<\/em><\/h4>\n\n

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been taking place for a year now. It is a conflict with far-reaching impact on health and environmental aspects, as well as on social and political ones. In support of the population and local institutions, CIMA Research Foundation is drawing on its expertise in civil protection, risk mitigation, forecasting and monitoring of weather events to assist the Italian Red Cross (Croce Rossa Italiana \u2012 CRI) in its humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. Having a clear, timely and up-to-date picture of weather and climate conditions is in fact crucial in managing humanitarian interventions: it enables a better targeting of efforts, the pinpointing of possible risk situations, and operating in conditions of safety.<\/p>\n\n

This collaboration is carried out within the framework of the European PPRD EAST 3<\/a> programme. Helmed by the Swedish Civil Protection organization (MSB), the programme aim is to strengthen the alert mechanisms and to modernize planning procedures for emergencies in Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. CIMA Research Foundation’s job here is to work with civil protection authorities and hydro-meteorological offices to establish Early Warning to Early Action systems that ensure activation of the promptest action. Precisely in response to the conflict in Ukraine, some activities originally planned for this geographic area have been restructured, by request of the Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO), in order to meet the emerging needs of this country. To this end, CIMA Research Foundation began generating the Impact-Based Forecast (IBF): a daily bulletin that presents weather forecasts for the Ukraine area, focusing on the variables with the most impact on humanitarian activities, and with particular attention for logistics (transport and the movement of goods, loads and vehicles) and for the impacts of extreme meteorological events on a very vulnerable population that is often forced to move around or to live without heating.<\/p>\n\n

The bulletin covers Ukraine, neighbouring Moldova and a buffer area where many refugees’ movements were concentrated in the first months of the conflict. The information included is on weather variables, with temperatures, precipitation, winds and some biometric indices: these are combined with data on particularly vulnerable factors, such as the locations of reception centres, the most important border crossing points, numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons, which imply movements taking place within national borders. The thresholds have been developed thanks to input from the Italian Red Cross \u2012 the primary beneficiary of the bulletin \u2012 by assessing the potential impact of extreme weather events.<\/p>\n\n

“The IBF is the result of scientific data and studies intersecting with humanitarian operators’ practical needs. For this reason, it is also a dynamic tool undergoing constant improvement: the bulletin changes face with the different seasons, also depending on other factors that can affect critical aspects of the territory. Thus, in the winter, we focus particular attention on temperatures below 0\u00b0C, which can cause the freezing over of road arteries of vital importance for transporting humanitarian aid, while in summer there are forecasts for wildfires and real-feel temperatures,” explained Giorgio Meschi, an engineer and one of the experts involved in generating the daily bulletin for CIMA Research Foundation. The team \u2012 coordinated by Davide Miozzo, a key expert and deputy team leader in the PPRD EAST 3 project \u2012 is made up of professionals with different specializations, ranging from meteorology to wildfires, GIS, and planning and structuring of alert mechanisms. The group is in constant contact with other colleagues in the CRI Information Management team and with the experts actively involved in managing the crisis in Ukraine. This constant flow of information, between a research centre and the end user, enables ad hoc changes to the tool so as to respond to specific needs.<\/p>\n\n

The initial foundations to building the bulletin were open-access data. Nonetheless, through the careful coordination work between various initiatives existing in the same areas and thanks to support from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), CIMA Research Foundation was able to draw on higher-resolution meteorological models that were more suitable to the bulletin\u2019s purposes.<\/p>\n\n

“The only real way to ensure sustainability and to maximize the impact of European projects is to work on synergic approaches capable of strengthening partnerships and of utilizing the important results gained within a systemic civil protection perspective,” Davide Miozzo pointed out. “It was in fact the partnership between the PPRD EAST 3 programme and the SEE MHEWS<\/a> project \u2012 led by the World Meteorological Organization and with ECMWF’s participation \u2012 that enabled this synergy to take shape on a record timescale.”<\/p>\n\n

The IBF also reports forecasts from Ukrainian and Moldovan weather services. These were initially included to support the services’ activities and are still maintained today to maximize dissemination. Besides forecasts for rainfall, snow, temperatures and winds for the coming 24 and 48 hours \u2012 these forecasts stretch up to six days ahead regarding the likelihood of temperatures going below 0\u00b0C \u2012 the bulletin also provides focuses on specific macro zones. These latter are areas identified by the CRI due to the presence of critical aspects, these being reception centres, mobile clinics and border crossings in particular.<\/p>\n\n

“We have been conducting this work for a year now. In fact, we’ve issued 320 daily bulletins, and therefore started almost immediately after the humanitarian crisis was first triggered. One of the main factors emerging ever more clearly from this analysis is the importance of collaboration between the different entities involved. First and foremost with the Italian Red Cross, because IBF originally came into being to respond to their needs, and therefore their feedback is essential,” Luca Ferraris, president of CIMA Research Foundation, commented. The relationship between CIMA and CRI is not a sporadic one, and is instead the outcome of lengthy collaboration between two entities (both operative organizations belonging to the Italian civil protection system), which has also been sealed in an operative convention that establishes the implementation framework and encourages the sharing of working methods and good practices. Luca Ferraris continued: “Nevertheless, the teamwork with all the other institutions, such as ECMWF, WMO, DG ECHO, UHC (Ukranian Hydrometeorological Center) and SHS (Ukranian Civil Protection), was also vital for developing this tool. At the same time, we should underline the value of making scientific expertise available as support to other fields, in this case the humanitarian sector, by developing Early Warning to Early Action (EWEA) processes and tools.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A support tool for the humanitarian actions deployed by the Italian Red Cross in the areas affected by the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, providing weather forecasts that can make a difference in activities. This is the Impact-Based Forecast \u2012 the daily bulletin that CIMA Research Foundation has been generating for Ukraine and several bordering areas for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-6565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6565"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6570,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6565\/revisions\/6570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}