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The Country Hydromet Diagnostics responds to the need for a standardized, integrated and operational tool and approach for assessing National Meteorological Services, their operating environment, and their contribution to high-quality weather, climate, hydrological and environmental information services and warnings.
The Diagnostics is an umbrella tool that draws on and adds value to existing WMO assessment material by synthesizing existing approaches and data into an easily interpretable form, validating the information provided by WMO Members through a peer-review process, and obtaining missing information.
The Diagnostics aims at informing policy and investment decision-making, in particular guiding investments of the members of the Alliance for Hydromet Development.
The Diagnostics uses peer review as its overarching approach, following examples of other organizations, including the OCED process for the peer review of member’s development assistance. As peers, advanced National Meteorological and Hydrological Services from developed and developing countries will undertake the Diagnostics, strictly following the tool. This will enable coherent and standardized Diagnostics across countries.
In the first phase, a multi-stakeholder working group supported the development of the CHD, its methodology and approach. Alliance members then partnered with 16 countries to road-test the tool as either peer reviewers or reviewed countries: Afghanistan, Austria, Chad, China, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Maldives, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, and Turkey.
The COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel, meaning that all peer-review assessments were conducted remotely. To conduct the assessment, peer-reviewers made use of the WMO’s Community Platform datasets which contain information suitable for assessing many of the element maturity levels for each NMHS. Reviewers also worked in collaboration with the country’s WMO Permanent Representative, respective country stakeholders, and Alliance members to obtain additional information necessary to complete the full assessment of each of the ten elements. CHD reports were then drafted by reviewers in consultation with the WMO Secretariat support team, whom also moderated the process, ensuring consistent application of the assessment tool across all countries.
Following completion of the assessments, feedback was collated from all participants to inform refinement and scaling-up of the tool in the next phase. The road-testing was completed in June 2021.
The second phase will see the tool being refined based on the lessons learned from phase one, again supported by a multi-partner working group. The updated CHD tool will be offered to Alliance members that request the diagnostics for the initial stage of project development in a country.
In the third phase, the delivery of the CHD will be fully integrated into the SOFF as a mandatary first step of the ‘readiness phase’. Assessments will be periodically updated for all SOFF supported countries to track progress in closing the capacity gap and inform future investment priorities.
The CHD provides a maturity assessment of the National Meteorological Services, their operating environment, and their contribution to high-quality hydromet services. The ten elements are grouped into four categories, helping to identify where additional focus and support may be needed:
How the NMHS mandate is formalized, and how it is implemented, overseen, and resourced.
How the NMHS brings together national and international partners to improve its service offering, including academic, research, private sector, and climate and development finance institutions.
The level of compliance with prescribed standards that surface-based observations infrastructure and data quality achieve.
The appropriateness of availability and practice as assessed at a national, regional and global level.
The role NWP and other forecasting aids play in product generation, as well as whether models are run internally, and if value-added compared to global models is determined.
NMHS’s role as the authoritative voice for weather-related warnings, and its operational relationship with disaster and water management structures.
NMHS’s role in and/or contribution to a national climate response framework.
NMHS’s role in and/or contribution to hydrological services according to its mandate and country requirements. Currently, the CHD does not evaluate the hydrological services if outside the NMHS.
Effectiveness of the NMHS in reaching all public and private sector users and stakeholders
Engagement with public and private sector stakeholders in delivering services and ensuring continuous improvement.
PEER REVIEWER:
Turkish State Meteorological Service
PEER REVIEWER:
Direction Générale de la Météorologie, Maroc
PEER REVIEWER:
Direction Générale de la Météorologie, Maroc
PEER REVIEWER:
MeteoSwiss (Switzerland)
PEER REVIEWER:
NiMet (Nigeria)
PEER REVIEWER:
IMD (India)
PEER REVIEWER:
ZAMG (Austria)
PEER REVIEWER:
NiMet (Nigeria)
PEER REVIEWER:
ZAMG(Austria)
