Testbed 1 – Lusaka, Zambia
29 January – 09 February 2024
Venues:
Testbed Operational Centre: Zambia Meteorological Department (ZMD), Lusaka
South Africa Testbed Office: South African Weather Service (SAWS), Pretoria
Mozambique Testbed Office, Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia (INAM), Maputo
What is a Testbed?
A weather forecast Testbed is a short event (2 weeks) to bring forecasting stakeholders together to trial new models and methods
Testbeds have been run annually in the USA for a number of years, to improve the forecasting of severe storms and tornados, bridging the gap between research and operations.
The GCRF African-SWIFT project (2017 – 2022) introduced the first testbeds to Africa (2019 and 2021 in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya) bringing together researchers, forecasters and users: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0156.1
WISER-EWSA Testbed 1 (T-1) will be a live severe weather forecasting event conducted in Southern Africa over a period of 2 weeks. During the testbed meteorologists, academics, economists, and user-engagement specialists will create real-time warnings of severe weather, deliver these to partnering user groups, and co-evaluate the effectiveness of those warnings. Learning from T-1 will be used to design and deliver a second testbed early in 2025.
The creation and delivery of forecasts will be conducted in three centres. Most of the scientific participants will come together at the Testbed Operational Centre (TOC) at ZMD in Lusaka. Smaller teams will remain in SAWS (Pretoria) and INAM (Maputo) to focus on engagement with their local user groups in the forecast delivery.
Contact details: WISER-EWSA Project Office: wiser-ewsa@ncas.ac.uk
The testbed will create and share forecasts of severe and high-impact weather in the Southern African region. This will be conducted as a co-production and evaluation exercise in partnership with a selected group of forecast users. The activity will not replace or duplicate any mandated weather services and early warning systems.
We will perform testing in real time of the current forecasting and nowcasting capability. Forecasters, researchers and users co-produce solutions, in preparation for the events.
- Forecasters and researchers jointly create forecasts.
- We use real-time observations and explore their value.
- We evaluate models from a user perspective, and create an environment for model intercomparison.
- We generate new Standard Operating Procedures for user-focussed forecasting and nowcasting.
Outputs of the EWSA Testbed:
- Early Warning Systems (EWS) which have been co-produced between forecast providers (in a network of agencies and countries) and users, and tested and evaluated in the testbed.
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) of the EWS.
- Documentation of other good practice.
- Training and practical experience of forecasters and users in use of nowcasting as a part of EWS.
- End-to-end evaluation of the value-chain associated with urban EWS.
Further information
