Extreme weather events are increasingly impacting eastern and southern Africa, with Mozambique among the worst affected. In response, the country is overhauling its early warning system in collaboration with the Savona, Italy-based International Center for Environmental Monitoring Research Foundation (CIMA). Together, they aim to enhance the capacity for forecasting and responding to floods, droughts, and cyclones.
At the heart of this initiative is the “situation room,” a central hub that monitors weather hazards in real time using the open-source hazard-monitoring Mydewetra platform. Mydewetra in fact aggregates satellite imagery, meteorological station data, and numerical models—generating maps and issuing alerts that inform decision-makers before disasters strike. Originally developed by CIMA for Italy’s Civil Protection Department and refined through years of experience with weather related disasters, the system now supports around twenty low-and middle-income countries.
Mozambique’s high vulnerability to cyclones has driven the effective use of Mydewetra for what’s called impact-based forecasting. “We analyze data to predict potential impacts on people and infrastructure, then share our findings with national water resources and meteorological agencies,” says Alberto Armando, of Mozambique’s National Institute for Disaster Management.
For example, during Cyclone Chido in December, experts at the institute monitored the storm’s evolution via Mydewetra. “The platform supported every phase of the response,” says Alessandro Masoero associate program director at CIMA, “with local authorities issuing the alert to a network of humanitarian organizations that were able to plan ahead.”
Partnerships Extend Project’s Reach
The upgraded system is now connected to a broader continental framework, says Armando. Mydewetra integrates Mozambique’s disaster risk data into the African Multi-Hazard Early Warning and Early Action System (AMHEWAS) to inform decision-makers and help issue timely alerts.
“What we also want to show is that it is possible to build professional weather stations at a low cost,” says Lauro Rossi, program director at CIMA. “Stations can be assembled with a few hundred euro—and when they are no longer transmitting, often with the sensors still functioning, [can] be easily restored by simply replacing the data logger.”
The organization, in partnership with the NGO WeWord, has installed weather and river stations across Mozambique’s Manica province, which transmit their observations via the available local networks and feed into Mydewetra. The stations can work with multiple power sources, including mains supply, solar panels, and backup batteries. Plus, the board connects through a satellite communication module in case local networks fail.
The data goes to any platform requesting it, says Prof.Luca Ferraris, president of CIMA. “ We try to open up to solutions that free authorities from proprietary licensing contracts for reading data because often this hidden cost adds up to the budget for setting up a weather station,” he says.
The system also uses drones—for civil protection (conducting surveys for urban flood models), for providing data to help forecast floods caused by cyclone rains, and for inspecting riverbeds.
This last capability, says Masoero, can simplify and speed up the updating of water level and flood information, compared to traditional methods.
According to the UN’s Early Warning for All Initiative, only half of the world’s countries integrate all four pillars of effective early warning: risk knowledge, hazard detection and forecasting, warning dissemination and communication, and preparedness and response.
“Effective early warning is complex, and it isn’t managed by only one national institution,” says Loretta Hieber Girardet of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. “But most countries invest in part of the value chain, not in all four components.”
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