What is its goal ?

What is the basic premise for this project?

What are its aims?

Climate Forecast Applications in Bangladesh project (CFAB) is a consortium of Bangladeshi and other international organizations and institutes.

The variability of monsoon intensity, duration and extent has a significant impact on the life & commerce of the people in the Asian monsoon region. Because of this fact, CFAB was instigated to derive methods of forecasting the discharge of water into Bangladesh and its retardation by sea-level elevation in the Bay. This project is unique in its approach by providing probabilistic monsoon forecasts linked to risk management and cost-benefit analyses.

Floods occur each year in Bangladesh as a regular property of the summer monsoon season. Occasionally, the floods have devastating effects lasting for lengthy periods and severely disrupting agriculture, commerce and transportation. These large-scale floods occur through excessive discharge into the Bangladesh delta, through retardation of outflow into the Bay of Bengal by high sea levels, and by excessive precipitation over the delta. The major source of floods is through discharge from the Ganges and Brahmaputra.

The specific aims are:

• Develop forecasting schemes for Bangladesh floods that add predictive skill to current prediction efforts within Bangladesh;

• Develop resilient schemes that will be able to take advantage of improvements in data availability, predictive modeling, data assimilation and etc., as they occur in the future;

• Promote international collaborative efforts that will provide data and tools necessary for the prediction schemes;

• Develop forecasting methods that are readily adaptable to the technology that exists within Bangladesh;

• Work actively with partners in Bangladesh to facilitate a rapid technological transfer;

• Develop an infrastructure within Bangladesh that will make use of the forecasts provided under the auspices of CFAB and that will eventually inherit the prediction schemes.