AGRHYMET is the regional climate centre for West African and Sahel, a technical expert institute for hydrology and meteorology on regional level. This new project builds on AGRHYMET and SMHIs decade-long collaboration and achievements in science, technology, capacity development, and societal impact, notably through the FANFAR system.
Read more about FANFAR on the project website.
Developing a cloud-based platform
The objectives of the project are to develop a cloud-based IT platform dedicated to forecasting the risks of hydro-climatic extremes, to transfer the FANFAR forecast production chains to the platform, and to strengthen the capacity of AGRHYMET specialists to sustainably operate, maintain and further improve the platform.
The platform starts off with the FANFAR system but the ambition is to expand the platform with additional systems in the future.
"The West African region is facing increasing challenges with floods, fuelled by climate change. Lives are lost, infrastructure is damaged and our food systems are fragilized", says Dr Abdou Ali, Head of the Climate, Water and Meteorology Department at AGRHYMET.
"This collaboration will strengthen our capacity to sustainably serve societies with relevant forecasts of hydro-climatic extremes to better manage the situation", he continues.
Co-development kick-off
The kick-off took place in Lomé, Togo in October 2024. It brought together seven key staff from AGHRYMET and SMHI. Through a structured dialogue the participants co-designed and specified requirements for different aspects of the platform including strategic, hydro-meteorological, IT-environment, security, and cloud technologies.
"It is great to be able to work with AGHRYMET on this platform. It fits well with SMHIs vision to strengthen our sister institutes to deliver reliable and accessible hydrometeorological forecasts, to serve societies across the globe", says Jafet Andersson, coordinator for international development cooperation at SMHI.
"This platform will boost AGHRYMETs capacity to operate and maintain the FANFAR system, which we have seen delivers concrete societal value in West Africa", he finishes.
The project runs from September 2024 to June 2026 and is financed by the Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP), World Bank (Grant IDA 920) and Dutch Fund TF0B8255.
Read more about the project, its objectives, approach and achievements here (smhi.se).