Last week the Union Civil Protection Mechanism has been activated for wildfires in Sicily, Italy.
The ECML team worked hand-in-hand with the Italian Civil Protection Department (ICPD).

The team produced a daily map showing the active fires, the fire danger forecast and the key emergency figures. All the technical data has been swiftly provided by the JRC-EFFIS Team.   

In addition, they released two more updates of the Greece wildfires map, prepared during the previous week.

The team also produced an urgent map showing the location of transport and military infrastructure, consular representations and other key points of interest in Niamey and Niger. 

Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum has been detained on 26 July by his own presidential guard in a tentative coup. Tensions between supporters of both sides have been at a breaking point. 

In collaboration with JRC T.5, the ECML team is organising a technical meeting on EIOS on 10-11 October at the JRC in Ispra. The purpose is to discuss and plan the development activities included in the signed Administrative Agreement from DG HERA, gathering feedback and expectations from stakeholders, and identifying opportunities for collaboration within the JRC and with other partners.

The DRMKC team is working ahead and preparing the Annual Seminar that will be in November in Brussels, with brainstorming and technical meetings with colleagues from DG ECHO.

The team also provided inputs on the questions addressed by the new Commissioner-designate Ilyana Ivanova on topics related to how research and science impact the daily lives of citizens. The results? With the great coordination of Andrea Toreti, the Unit provided practical examples and future directions for the key nexus of research and science and our role in it! 

In addition, they reviewed the Commission Implementing Decision on the financing of the multiannual action plan for the NDICI-Global Europe thematic programme on Global Challenges (Planet) for 2023-2026.

Another review carried out by the team was on the the new Joint Staff Working Document on the "Updated toolset for EU Conflict Analysis and Conflict Early Warning Objectives, processes and guidelines". The European External Action Service (EEAS) is currently revising their approach to conflict early warning and conflict analysis. The GCRI team gave feedback on the new guidelines, in particular on the role of the Global Conflict Risk Index, the Dynamic Conflict Risk Model and related tools. 

The FLOODS team celebrated the release of GloFAS v4.0. Have you seen the improvements that were introduced? If not, read the news announcement.

We will soon hear about it and much more, including floods in Emilia Romagna, in the second episode of the new Copernicus podcast Let’s Talk EU Space. Stay tuned to know when the episode will be out!

The GHSL team was recovering from its participation in the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development held from 10 to 19 July. As reported in previous newsletters, during the Forum it was presented the SDG 11 Synthesis Report ‘Rescuing SDG 11 for a resilient urban planet’, which contains several contributions from the team.

Regarding MAPPING, last week RM team was activated in Greece four more time (EMSR676, EMSR677, EMSR678 and EMSR679) to monitor wildfires.

As of July 26, they had received 7 activations as shown below. On July 27, Greece activated the service EMSR679 for wildfire in Thessaly region, bringing the RM activations in Greece to a total number of 8 since 17 July.

About the situation on Rhodes Island, a week after fire started, the blaze hasn’t been not fully contained. Many villages on the island have been evacuated, causing inconvenience to both residents and the many tourists present. 

A detailed and up-to-date account of the activities carried out by the Rapid Mapping Team can be found in the dedicated Situational Reporting available for each activation.

Additional information about the wildfires in Greece is also accessible through our Information Bulletin, published last week.

With several critical fires occurring in the Mediterranean area, the WILDFIRES team is constantly monitoring how the situation evolves.

The role of EFFIS and Copernicus EMS was featured in a JRC news announcement and in the Commission’s Daily news.

From DROUGHTS, it is worth to report a discussion with H2020-CLINT partners on an innovative complex spatio-temporal AI approach to predict the risk climate extremes 3-6 months in advance.

The team also engaged with H2020-Xaida partners on the attribution of storm Poly to address a request coming from vice-president Timmermans.