Flooding is a rapidly growing concern in West Africa. Several floods have occurred in recent years with severe consequences including loss of lives, displacements, disruption to public services, destroyed homes, damaged infrastructure, and delayed transportation. Flooding is also projected to increase with climate change. Hence, there is an urgent need for improved flood management in the region.

Access to operational forecasts and alerts is a critical component in addressing the flood challenges in West Africa. FANFAR is an European Union-financed project that co-designs, co-adapts, and co-operates a short- and medium-term hydrological forecasting and alert pilot system for West Africa. It aims to provide key stakeholders with reliable and timely access to operational forecasts and alerts enabled by a robust forecast production system adapted to regional conditions and operated by West African institutions.

FANFAR enhances the capacity of West African institutions to forecast, alert for and manage floods.

capture of flood ivory coast
Photo of a road during a severe flooding situation in Ivory Coast in September 2018. Courtesy: Edouard Ouattara.
Flow of information
The operational forecasting chain used in FANFAR. Each day a new hydrological forecast is produced and distributed to enable productive applications in West Africa.

FANFAR aims to provide reliable and timely access to flood forecasts and alerts through a range of distribution channels to ensure that the information actually reaches its target audience. The distribution channels currently include web visualisation, SMS, e-mail, and application programming interfaces (API). The forecasting system is based on an open-source hydrological model employed in a cloud-based Information and Communications Technology (ICT) environment to ensure operational robustness despite frequent cuts to electricity and internet supply in the region.

Read more about the aims and approach of the FANFAR project.

Partners

bar of logo of partners

Find out more about the partners of the FANFAR consortium.

News & events

AGRHYMET and SMHI kick off the project in Lomé, Togo in October 2024.
December 12, 2024

Co-development kick-off continues decade-long collaboration in West Africa

SMHI and AGRHYMET join forces in a new project aimed at co-developing a multi-model platform for operational forecasting of hydro-climatic…
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March 16, 2022

FANFAR monitoring at ECOWAS

AGRHYMET has installed technical infrastructure at ECOWAS in Abuja, to enable the ECOWAS DRR team to better monitor and manage…
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February 20, 2022

SMHI supports operational production during 2022

Following the end of the projects “FANFAR” and “Hydorlogy-TEP CCN”, the operational production of up-to-date forecasts at Hydrology-TEP stopped at…
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July 8, 2021

FANFAR saved lives and property – FANFAR a sauvé des vies et des propriétés

English “In September last year, we received an early warning from the FANFAR system which saved approximately 2,500 lives. The…
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bernard flood
July 5, 2021

Possibilite de formation / Training opportunity

Français Le programme international de formation avancée sur le « Changement climatique – Atténuation et adaptation » (ITP 309) en Afrique de…
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final-fanfar-stakeholders
June 18, 2021

Finale of FANFAR

English FANFAR adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic and transformed the final workshop into two online sessions gathering 82 West African…
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