Buongiorno, colleagues! Below is a recap of what happened at our Unit on the last week of July.

We confirmed that on 12 September, Tom will moderate a high-level session in Geneve organised by the Czech presidency and focused on technologies for DRR. You might have also noticed that we had the presence of an Israeli delegation, which CRITECH and other teams warmly welcomed and met. They came to learn more about our work and look for partnerships and I believe the outcome of their visit was very positive.

The FLOODS team finished contributing to the DRMKC newsletter, where they shared all about the 2nd SMDRM workshop. EFAS has been presented in the framework of the Israeli delegation visit, and the team had an introductory meeting with UNICEF to share exposure data.

Some team members were recalibrating Lisflood model in some regions while risk and reporting tools were also improved. Others focused on monitoring floods, especially through GloFAS products.

GHSL kept trying to understand if the temporal trends of the new release match with historic reference data or if some adjustment is needed. After the delivery of the installation of the Urban Centre Database and the training by Ars Electronica, the team is working on data stories to be told.

Below is a picture the team took during the DEGURBA workshop in The Philippines. This week they will discuss with India and Indonesia to implement the Degree of Urbanisation with national data.

MAPPING has been having one activation per day on average since 1 July. On 26 July they had 26 activations already, 13 of which were being monitored in parallel. Apart from one EQ and FL activations, the remaining came from wildfires. 

Two tender contracts for the aerial component were signed with companies who will help during the analysis and recovery phases with images taken by drones. Jean-François and the team are also glad to have 2 new colleagues joining the team: benvenuti Guido Antonio DI CARLO and Piero CECCATO! 

On WILDFIRES, colleagues Jesus and Duarte travelled to Chile for a fires meeting where they were helping a Group of Forest Fires Expert get shape, as happened with the (European) Expert Group on Forest Fires. Many countries and delegations attended the event and below we can see Jesus during the inauguration speech.