Multi-scale Flood Monitoring and Assessment Services for West Africa (MiFMASS) – Newsletter Volume 1, No 1. December, 2020
Message from the Consortium Lead
It to is the my pleasure maiden to edition welcome of you the CSSTE Consortium Newsletter – EO-Flood Watch – through which you will get information about the Consortium, flooding challenges and regional efforts being made to mitigate the disaster. The Consortium is made up of seven (7) Partners spread across five (5) West African Countries – Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Cote D’Ivoire.
CSSTE Consortium is one of the 12 Consortia of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security and Africa (GMES & Africa) support programme – a joint initiative of the African Union and the European Union targeted at using Earth Observation data (Satellite data) to tackle existing challenges in Africa, by Africans and for Africa. In this phase of the GMES & Africa programme, challenges that are addressed are categorized under two sub-themes; (i) Water and Natural Resources (WNR) (ii) Marine and Coastal
Resources. Our Consortium is focusing on Multiscale Flood Monitoring and Assessment Services for West Africa (MIFMASS) which falls under the WNR sub-theme.
The EU made available Copernicus resources to the Consortia to develop applications, services or even adapt existing Copernicus services to meet the needs of the region. In this regard, the CSSTE Consortium will be using Sentinel data to develop a Flood Forecasting and Nowcasting service
that will be disseminated across various levels of the community, from Disaster Management organizations (DMOs) to the local communities. Other Services / Products are: an updatable Flood event database that will serve as a repository of historical Flood events and present occurrences; long & short term capacity building for DMOs; Damage Assessment and forecast maps; etc.
In this issue of the newsletter, you will get to know the Consortium and its Partners as well as the Products and Services being developed for the West African Sub-region in the area of Flood management and mitigation. In subsequent editions, the Product /Services will be elaborated on. The
Consortium is committed to and has been working with relevant National institutions across the region to build / enhance the capacity of these institutions for improved delivery of their mandate. It is our hope that the cooperation and successes the Consortium has had so far with our stakeholders will continue even beyond the lifetime of the project.
Wishing all our readers, a safe and Happy Yuletide Season!
