Press release + Flood early warning system now in safe hands
New start for the European Meteorological Data Collection Centre
Flood early warning system now in safe hands
Aachen, November 2015. With climate change the frequency of
floods that can put people and infrastructures at risk is increasing.
In order to be better prepared for them, the European Flood
Awareness System – EFAS – has been fully operational under the
Copernicus emergency management service since 2012. The Joint
Research Centre (JRC) is now starting a project for the further
development and operation of the EFAS Meteorological Data
Collection Centre. KISTERS, the solutions provider for water
management, together with the Global Precipitation Climatology
Centre (GPCC) of the German Weather Service (DWD), have won the
contract for the Copernicus project. The new system will gather
measurement data from all participating countries on precipitation,
air temperature, wind speed and direction, and will then validate,
manage and store it in a central database. This consistent European
pool of data will enable scientific evaluation using standardized
methods. The linkage of measurement data together with weather
and runoff forecasts will, moreover, support reliable flood
forecasting up to ten days in advance. Appropriate early warnings
will be automatically sent to both the national and regional flood
control centers of the EFAS member states as well as the European
Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC). The technical
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basis for the data centre is the water management information
system WISKI, which reports, evaluates and disseminates the
meteorological situation several times per day. The system is
designed to be able to integrate and process rapidly growing
volumes of data of the future. High-performance validation
methods and the real-time processing of high resolution time series
round off WISKI’s range of service.
The European Flood Awareness System has been operating under the
patronage of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service since
October 2012. This institution’s objective is to prepare member
states optimally for climate-related catastrophes.
As well as generating early flood warnings the Meteorological Data Collection
Centre analyzes the general weather situation and shows the relationships
between anomalies in the weather and occurrences of flooding.
(Source: KISTERS AG, DWD)
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About KISTERS
KISTERS AG is a fast growing mid-size IT firm with 500 employees, its
head office is in Aachen, Germany with subsidiaries in North America,
Australia, New Zealand, China and several European countries.
KISTERS offers leading software solutions for the sustainable
management of water, energy and air. Professional expertise,
commitment and branch experience make KISTERS a sought-after
solutions partner. In the German-speaking regions, KISTERS software
is the market leader in water management and energy data
management. WISKI, the KISTERS water information system is
software for network monitoring management focusing on the
compilation and analysis of hydrologic data. WISKI is used by
hundreds of clients with several thousand licenses worldwide in the
monitoring of surface and groundwater, meteorology, flood
warnings, reservoir operations and security, water quality und urban
drainage sectors.
About Copernicus
Copernicus (previously the Global Monitoring for Environment and
Security – GMES) is an EU program for the establishment of European
information services based on observations of the Earth from
satellites and local (not spatial) data. It has been set up by the
European Commission (EC) with the support of the European Space
Agency (ESA) and the European Environment Agency (EEA). Its
objective is the observation and forecasting of the state of the
environment on land, water and in the atmosphere, in order to
support climate protection, adaptation strategies and the efficient
management of emergency situations, as well as increasing the safety
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of all citizens. Copernicus is a user-oriented program, which makes its
information services freely and openly available to users, most of
which are public authorities.
About GPCC
For more than 25 years (since 1989) the German Weather Service has
operated the Global Precipitation Climatology Center (GPCC) in order
to publish regular globally scanned analyses of land surface
precipitation on behalf of the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO) based on its precipitation database, which is the most
comprehensive in the world. As the subcontractor for KISTERS, WZN
is making available its technical expertise and experience gained over
many years in the areas of data quality assurance and working with
data vendors.
Further information:
KISTERS AG
Astrid Beckers
Pascalstr. 8+10
52076 Aachen
Telephone: 09131 480096 39
Telefax: 09131 480096 55
astrid.beckers@kisters.de
www.kisters.de
Media contact
Edward Walker
Braun & Voigt Werbeagentur GmbH
Kaiserstraße 11a
69115 Heidelberg
Tel: +49 6203 794675
Fax +49 6221 976363
e.walker@braun-voigt.de
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