CASTRIES, St. Lucia--The Italian Government has agreed to provide financial support to the St. Lucia Government for a 2.5 million euro (US $2.8 million) state-of-the-art flood and hazard early warning system and information centre.
The agreement between the two countries was formalised during the recently concluded signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement at the UN Headquarters in New York, with the island’s Sustainable Development Minister Dr. James Fletcher and his Italian counterpart, Gian Luca Galletti signing the agreement.
The early warning system will involve the establishment of a multi-hazard information centre for natural disasters forecasting and early warning, that combines information derived from multiple ground and satellite sources, and provides concrete information on upcoming extreme weather events and their potential impact on the island.
The information centre will provide extreme weather events forecasting and early warning alerts; flood hazard mapping and alerts; multi-hazard risk assessments, fisheries control, oil spill detection and forest monitoring.
It will be supported by state-of the-art operational capabilities such as COSMO-SkyMed 7 – a constellation of four radar satellites funded and designed by the Government of Italy and used by Government institutions and industries worldwide in numerous operational scenarios, many of which are related to natural disasters alert and response systems. There will also be support by On-Demand-Mapping-Services for Emergency; the unique industrial operational capability of providing rapid pre and post event maps worldwide, based on the analysis of satellite images acquired immediately after an event.
The support from the Government of Italy comes as a result of a September 2015 request made by Minister Fletcher, in a meeting with the Italian Environment Minister and other senior officials from the Italian Government, in New York at the UN Headquarters.
During that meeting Dr. Fletcher requested assistance for St. Lucia to deal with the impacts of extreme weather events, particularly flooding and landslides that caused loss of lives and severe damage to property and livelihoods.
The project was designed by Italian company E-Geos, which will be responsible for the installation of equipment and the training of St Lucian officers who will use it. It is expected to provide Saint Lucia with sophisticated technology that will allow the country to predict the likely impacts of threats from climate change, while at the same time create the basis for the development of a “centre of excellence” for the study of the effects of climate change and the use of geospatial systems. ~ Caribbean360 ~
