Date: 5 September
Time: 11:30 - 13:00
Room: xxx
Initiators: Saskia Willemse, Christoph Spirig, MeteoSwiss, Switzerland

Many European institutions, including several national hydrometeorological services (NHMSs), are involved in projects aiming at improving meteorological and climatological services in developing countries. In this context it often happens that several development projects led by institutions of different countries are running at the NHMS of one developing country. The task at hand is often too big for any single helping NHMS to tackle and solve the numerous aspects that need to be addressed to make progress in the NHMS which receives the help. This justifies the presence of more than one helping NHMS, but it is not always easy to have the entire picture of all the ongoing initiatives. There is ample scope for coordination between the helping NHMSs and with other initiatives, as for example the World Bank Modernization Projects. A good example is set by AEMET which, based on their great experience in collaboration projects in Latin America, are in the process of starting a coordinating dialogue with European NHMSs active in this region. We believe that there is room for stronger interaction between helping NHMSs and this is an example to be followed.
At this workshop we would like to discuss existing and possibly new ways to foster the exchange of scientific and strategic information on development initiatives in the field of meteorological and climatological services. The EMS conference is a good opportunity to start the discussion. In fact, this year the EMS conference programme has been restructured in order to cover the whole process leading to the delivery of these services and to better involve all stakeholders and users. The focus of the existing EMS sessions has been on work carried out in European and a few other industrialized countries, whereas European initiatives in developing countries were discussed only occasionally. One of the goals of the present workshop is to find out if a new EMS session on initiatives in developing countries would offer an appropriate opportunity for a broad exchange at European level.

Programme of the Workshop
The workshop will last two hours and will be carried out as a moderated discussion, therefore an active participation of the audience is requested.

Topics which will be treated:
- Exchange of information on recent or ongoing development initiatives in the field of meteorological and climatological services
- Good and bad examples of coordination between helping NHMSs
- Discuss how such initiatives can be better coordinated in the future through a network
- Discuss the possible content and structure of a new EMS conference session on development initiatives

Target group of the workshop
The main target group is given by conference participants who have been in some way involved in or are planning development initiatives. Participation in the discussion is highly encouraged.

Registration
The workshop can be attended only by registered participants of the EMS conference. It is free of cost but for organizational reasons we ask to send a message to saskia.willemse[at]meteoswiss.ch by August 28, 2017.