The Minister for Works and Housing, Francis Asenso-Boakye has presented state-of-the-art equipment to beneficiary institutions namely Ghana Hydrological Authority, Ghana Meteorological Agency, and the Water Resources Commission for the establishment of the Accra Flood Early Warning System (FEWS).

The Early Warning System will provide advanced notification of impending floods to residents in flood-prone communities so they can take steps to protect their lives and properties ahead of an impending flood.

Presenting the equipment to the institutions, Asenso-Boakye said the procurement and installation of the equipment mark the first step in country’s journey toward a safer, more resilient Greater Accra Region, noting that the initiative is a giant stride towards mitigating the devastating impact of floods on residents of the Greater Accra Region.

Explaining how the system works, the sector Minister said the equipment which forms building block of the FEWS will collect and transmit data after installation on the locations, speeds and amount of rain as well as the levels, turbulence of rain run-offs in primary drains.

The data will be transmitted to a platform where the underlying programming and modelling will generate extrapolations for the immediate and later circumstances, also known as the nowcasts and forecasts, to estimate the probability of flooding in specific communities, ahead of the possible occurrence of floods.

This will culminate in the issuance of advanced alerts to residents in specific at-risk communities, thereby, affording vulnerable populations time, ahead of imminent floods, to secure their valuables, evacuate to safer grounds, and protect their loved ones.

Asenso-Boakye disclosed that a service provider will be engaged to set up the Flood Early Warning System platform and operationalize it for three years.

The Service Provider is required to also maintain the equipment and overall system in addition to training nominated staff of the three institutions together with the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) to be able to take over and run the FEWS after the closure of the contract of the Service Provider.

FEWS is part of the holistic flood mitigation approach adopted by the Government to curb flooding in the Greater Accra Region. It includes other structural measures of dredging the Odaw, reconstruction of three bridges, and the broken section of the Odaw Drain at Achimota, expansion of critical tributaries of Nima and Kaneshie drains, and reconfiguration poorly engineered sections at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle section of the drain.