Weather and climate in the AI-supported early warning system DAKI-FWS

The project DAKI-FWS (BMWi joint-project “Data and AI-supported early warning system to stabilise the German economy”; German: “Daten- und KI-gestütztes Frühwarnsystem zur Stabilisierung der deutschen Wirtschaft”) develops an early warning system (EWS) to strengthen economic resilience in Germany. The EWS enables better characterization of the development and course of pandemics or hazardous climate extreme events and can thus protect and support lives, jobs, land and infrastructures.

The weather and climate modules of the DAKI-FWS use state-of-the-art seasonal forecasts for Germany and apply innovative AI-approaches to prepare very high spatial resolution simulations. These are used for the climate-related practical applications of the project, such as pandemics or subtropical/tropical diseases, and contribute to the estimation of the outbreak and evolution of health crises. Further, the weather modules of the EWS objectively identify weather and climate extremes, such as heat waves, storms and droughts, as well as compound extremes from a large pool of key data sets. The innovative project work is complemented by the development and AI-enhancement of the European Flood Awareness System model, LISFLOOD, and forecasting system for Germany at very high spatial resolution. The model combined with the high-end output of the seasonal forecast prepares high-resolution, accurate flood risk assessment. The final output of the EWS and hazard maps not only support adaptation, but they also increase preparedness providing a time horizon of several months ahead, thus increasing the resilience of economic sectors to impacts of the ongoing anthropogenic climate change. The weather and climate modules of the EWS provide economic, political, and administrative decision-makers and the general public with evidence on the probability of occurrence, intensity and spatial and temporal extent of extreme events as well as with critical information during a disaster.